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SUNDAY SCHOOL 



AN 



lvainGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 



F. WATSON. HANNAN 







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COPIRSGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Sunday School 

An 

Evangelistic 
Opportunity 

BY 

F. WATSON HANNAN 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



*x 



Copyright, 1920, by 
F. WATSON HANNAN 



AUG -2 1920 



CLA597116 



TO MT WIFE 
WHOSE INVALUABLE H^ELP AND INSPIRATION 
HAVE MADE MY WORK A CONSTANT JOY, THIS 
LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction 7 

I. The Pastor's Opportunity 11 

II. The Superintendent's Opportunity 38 

III. The Teacher's Opportunity 54 

IV. The Parents' Opportunity 81 

V. Decision Day ... 102 

VI. Net Profits . . , 121 



INTRODUCTION 

There is a widespread feeling to-day 
that the church has lost its hold upon 
the masses, and therefore it no longer 
has the evangelistic opportunity that it 
once had The time was when a large 
number of unconverted people, both old 
and young, would attend the Sunday 
evening service. That service, therefore, 
often took an evangelistic form, and 
frequent conversions, especially during the 
winter season, were the common order 
of the day. Very often a successful 
evening service would be followed by 
several weeks of revival meetings. But 
those conditions no longer obtain in 
large sections of the country. In many 
places evangelistic meetings are not at- 
tempted at all on the ground that the 
unconverted no longer come to church. 
The serious thing is that there seems no 
likelihood of the unconverted changing 
their present attitude. If they do not 
7 



INTRODUCTION 

change their attitude, the church must 
change its methods. If they will not 
come to the church, the church will have 
to go to them if the two ever come to- 
gether. It will take the church some 
time to make the readjustment of its 
methods, and train a new group of evan- 
gelistic workers who can successfully carry 
the message of the church to the masses. 
In the meantime the church must not 
let up on its evangelistic effort, and about 
the only available field which is always 
ready for evangelistic effort, is the Sunday 
school. The Sunday school as an evan- 
gelistic field has been taken for granted 
rather than taken seriously. 

The value of this opportunity has not 
been clearly sensed by the church; but 
now as a sequel to the centenary and 
other like great financial movements, there 
is a campaign on in the churches gen- 
erally, to increase their membership in 
some way commensurate with the increased 
resources. If that is done in the near 
future, the Sunday school as an evan- 
gelistic field must be worked with a 
thoroughness and persistence with which 
8 



INTRODUCTION 

it has not been worked hitherto. The 
greater part of the increase in church 
members in the next four or five years 
will come from the Sunday school. If 
the present waste in the Sunday school 
could be stopped and all its forces cap- 
italized for the church, the increase in 
membership and general prosperity would 
be so great that even the most sanguine 
would be surprised and the most despair- 
ing would take new heart and hope. 
There are many difficulties in the way, 
such as lack of vision, poor physical 
equipment, such as improper buildings, 
inadequate training of the teaching force, 
want of leadership, etc.; but hard work, 
consecration, and a passion for the spir- 
itual well-being of the young life of the 
church will overcome them. 

The object of this little book is to 
state the evangelistic opportunity of the 
Sunday school as clearly as it may, and 
to offer some practical suggestions as to 
how that opportunity may be utilized. 
It is with the earnest hope that these 
suggestions may be helpful to pastors, 
superintendents, teachers, and parents, to 
9 



INTRODUCTION 

whom they are offered, that this little 

book is sent forth. 

Drew Theological Seminary, 

Madison, New Jersey. 
February, 1920. 



10 



CHAPTER I 

THE PASTOR'S OPPORTUNITY 

It is a very grave error to consider the 
Sunday school and the church as two 
separate and independent organizations, 
where the pastor is the leader of one, 
and the superintendent the leader of 
the other, and neither leaders nor organ- 
izations having much to do with each 
other. That is a condition which pre- 
vails in some quarters; the pastor has no 
vital interest in the Sunday school and 
seldom attends it. The superintendent 
has only an indifferent interest in the 
church and seldom attends it. His whole 
time and strength are expended in the 
Sunday school, as the pastor's are in the 
church. There is no team work done. 
The children and young people of Sunday- 
school age consider the Sunday school 
their church and the superintendent or 
teacher their leader and adviser. This 
condition ought not to be. It is not 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

the Sunday school and the church, but 
the Sunday school in the church. The 
Sunday school bears the same relation 
to the church that the children do to 
the home. The church is a family. In 
that family the pastor has the place of 
father, and the superintendent, who comes 
into a closer and more direct contact 
with the children, holds the place of 
mother. Just as in the home the father 
and mother should work in the closest 
sympathy and cooperation for the happi- 
ness of the home and the well-being of 
the children, so should the pastor and 
superintendent cooperate in the work of 
the church family. If the pastor does\ 
not look after the Sunday school of/y 
to-day, he will have no church to-morrow ? 
and if the superintendent does not lool 
after the church of to-day, he will hav< 
no Sunday school to-morrow. Neithei 
can be neglected without working detri; 
ment to the other. The church creates 
the Sunday school, and the Sunday school 
re-creates the church. They are inter- 
' dependent. 

In this chapter we are chiefly concerned 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

with the pastor and his opportunity. 
A pastor is sometimes asked, "How much 
time do you give to your Sunday school?" 

He replies: "The work of the church 
is so heavy and taxing that I can give 
no time to the Sunday school. I have a 
good superintendent and good teachers* 
and I leave the Sunday school to them. 
With the heavy work of the week two 
sermons on Sunday is all the service I 
am able to render. If the Sunday school 
is in the morning, I cannot attend be- 
cause I need to prepare for my pulpit; 
and if it comes in the afternoon, I can- 
not attend, for I must rest up for my 
evening service." 

A further question may be asked: 
"How much of an evangelistic oppor- 
tunity does the evening service offer? 
How many of the Sunday school young 
people are in the congregation in the 
evening?" 

He may reply: "There is very little 
evangelistic opportunity in the evening; 
only church people attend, and few of 
them. It is only the most faithful people 
I have who attend twice a day. The 
13 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

young people have had their church in 
the Sunday school and Epworth League 
or Christian Endeavor Society, so they 
do not come out to the evening service." 

That state of affairs is not only widely 
true, but too true to be comfortable. 
The pastor is saying, whether he senses 
the seriousness of it or not, that he does 
not come into close personal contact 
with his young people at all; and his 
most hopeful and fertile field for evan- 
gelism is not worked at all. That is the 
serious part of it. 

The reply to such a position as the 
pastor takes is, that his church ought 
to be so organized that much of the 
detail work that takes his time and 
strength through the week would be 
done, and better done, by laymen, many 
of whom have little interest in the church 
because they have nothing to do; and 
the pastor ought to be so relieved of 
the burdens which he ought not to bear 
that he could give sufficient time and 
personal attention to his Sunday school 
and young people, in order that he could 
make the most of his evangelistic oppor- 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

tunity. The best way to get Sunday 
school and Epworth League young people 
to the evening service is for the pastor 
to attend their service and show such a 
friendly interest in them that he will 
be indispensable to them. It is just at 
that age that young people respond with 
all the joy of their exuberant enthusi- 
asm to a real friendly and sympathetic 
interest in them. Too often they are 
misunderstood by older people, and they 
greatly appreciate one who does under- 
stand them. If the pastor has not time 
for his young people, they will not have 
time for him. 

A pastor may not be able to attend 
every session of the Sunday school. 
Funerals, sickness, and other emergency 
calls may prevent it, but nothing will 
excuse him from his general attendance 
on his Sunday school. If he has little 
sympathy for the young people, they 
will have little confidence in him. It 
can be taken for granted that the pastor 
is interested in the Sunday school be- 
cause it is a part of his church; but it 
will not be taken for granted in the most 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

important place, namely, in the Sunday 
school itself, if he does not attend it. 
That is one institution that does not 
thrive on absent treatment. If the pastor 
is not wise, he may find that he has 
two churches, instead of one — an old 
people's church of which he is pastor, 
and a young people's church with no 
pastor. The young people will have 
their church, Sunday school and Epworth 
League, and the pastor will not be there. 
The pastor will have his old people's 
church, and the young people will not 
be there. If this condition prevails, the 
pastor has fallen upon a tragedy. If 
a pastor once loses his young people by 
misunderstanding them or f ailing to appre- 
ciate them, or if by neglect he fails to win 
them in the early part of his pastorate, 
it is almost impossible for him to win 
these young people to any sort of enthusi- 
astic cooperation. Whoever may have to 
be neglected in the church, let it not 
be the young people, for they are the 
church of to-morrow. Some ministers 
have suggested to the writer that they 
thought of abolishing both Sunday school 
16 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

and Epworth League, so as to force the 
young people to attend church service. 
That method would not do it. 

Two things are essential to get young 
people to church. The first is to show 
a constant friendly interest in them and 
their meetings, and, second, to make 
the church service worth while; bright, 
sane, wholesome, challenging. Young peo- 
ple will not be made to want what older 
people want by taking from them what 
they do want. Young people can be 
successfully led, but not successfully 
driven. 

If the pastor says it is not a lack of 
interest, but a lack of strength that 
keeps him away, the reply is, that if 
the main business of the church is to 
get people to God, or to keep them from 
leaving God, the Sunday school is the 
most natural, ready, and hopeful field he 
has for exactly that work. It is far better 
if it needs be to let many other forms 
of work alone than to neglect this most 
important work. About the only field 
of raw material that he has to work on 
evangelistically is the field right in his 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

church. He does not have to go after 
it; it comes to him, offers itself to him, 
and he is the best fitted person in the 
church to do that piece of work. If he 
wisely organizes his church, he will find 
many men and women who can do much 
that he does better than he, or at least 
as well, who could not begin to do the 
work of evangelizing the Sunday school 
as he can. So the school is not worked 
as it should be for want of pastoral leader- 
ship. If he gets his young people to 
church, he will not preach the worse, 
but the better. Nothing inspires or 
vitalizes preaching like having conver- 
sions in one's ministry. If he succeeds 
in building his own young people into 
the church and the Kingdom, and in- 
spiring them with ideals of usefulness, 
and sending them to college to get ready 
for some life work that is really worth 
while, he will have a ministry of un- 
speakable blessedness; a ministry far be- 
yond that of merely marking time or 
running a treadmill sort of work which 
is marked only by a dead mediocrity. 
The pastor's enthusiasm for Sunday 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

school evangelism should be a sustained 
enthusiasm. That kind of enthusiasm 
is contagious. The superintendent and 
teachers and pupils will get it, and con- 
versions in the Sunday school will be 
looked upon as a part of the normal 
work of the school. If the pastor comes 
in only on Decision Day, he is almost 
a stranger, and may be suspected of 
having some sort of a religious trick to 
spring upon the school. But if deciding 
for Christ is made so beautiful, simple, 
natural and wholesome that young people 
will be won to it by its beauty and power, 
then when that work climaxes in De- 
cision Day he will have a sort of modern 
Pentecost every now and then in the 
Sunday school. This sustained evan- 
gelism does not do away with a special 
well-prepared effort like Decision Day. 
It makes such a day inevitable. But the 
pastor's interest in the Sunday school 
not only gives him an evangelistic oppor- 
tunity, but it will do more than any- 
thing else to bring the school as an evan- 
gelistic challenge into his church services. 
It is difficult for the pastor to stimulate 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

an interest in the Sunday school among 
his people if he is out of the school himself. 
The men of the church, through the 
example of the pastor, can do a great deal 
toward getting out of the mind of young 
men the false notion that the Sunday 
school is a child's institution. If the men 
are in the school, boys and young men 
will be there too. The Sunday school 
boy problem is the man problem. Solve 
the man problem and you solve the 
boy problem. There is no boy problem 
by itself; it is the under side of the man 
problem. If men are won to God in the 
Sunday school, the boys and youth will 
be. It will be hard work for the pastor, 
but it will be the work that will make 
the largest practical returns. The returns 
will not be in terms of dollars, but of 
lives, and they in their turn will see to 
it that the dollars come. It is an entirely 
mistaken notion that any work which 
keeps the pastor regularly out of the 
Sunday school is more important than 
the work in the Sunday school which he 
neglects. It is much better for the pastor 
to come to the evening service tired, and 
20 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOETUNITY 

face a crowd of eager young people, than 
to come to it fresh, and face sections of 
yawning empty pews. If his object is 
to keep the wheels of church services in 
motion, that is one thing, and not a 
very important thing. But if his object 
is to get people to God, that is another 
and a most important thing. To do 
that he will either have to go where the 
people are, or do the thing which will 
bring the people where he is. And 
surely nothing is to be left undone which 
would bring his own young people to 
him. 

It is a trite thing to say that the church 
of to-morrow is in the Sunday school 
of to-day; but many pastors act as if 
they did not more than half believe it, 
and some act as if they did not believe 
it at all. The best way for the pastor 
to get his trained workers, namely, Sunday 
school superintendent and teachers, to 
cooperate with him in the work of the 
church is to cooperate with them in the 
work of the school. What an evangel- 
istic asset a pastor would have in his 
Sunday school Board if they would en- 
21 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

thusiastically engage in the service of 
getting the Sunday school to attend 
evening service, especially from the inter- 
mediate age up! 

But the pastor who attends his Sunday 
school with an evangelistic motive can 
render the school an invaluable service 
by moving quietly about the school and 
finding out what the teachers are teach- 
ing, where the misfits are, etc. He will 
sometimes find that certain teachers will 
make evangelistic work, especially in their 
classes, impossible. He will find some 
teachers who in a short time can suc- 
ceed in driving out, or cause to stay out, 
some of the best pupils in the school; 
and when they have emptied one class 
they are given another. Some superin- 
tendents know this, but they do not 
know how to get rid of the teachers with- 
out uprooting the wheat with the tares. 
Those teachers may be good people, but 
wholly unfitted for teachers, and the 
pastor may find some other work about 
the church which they can do well and 
which will take so much of their time 
that they will have to give up teaching, 
22 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOETUNITY 

which is the best thing that could happen 
to the school. He will then eliminate by 
substitution without hurting anybody, and 
will succeed in helping everybody. These 
teachers will be helped, the Sunday school 
will be helped and the church will be 
helped; but the pastor cannot do that 
if he knows nothing about it. The pastor 
thus becomes an indispensable aid to 
the superintendent. The rearrangement 
or reorganization of classes and teachers 
can far better be done by the pastor and 
superintendent together than by either 
of them alone, especially when both are 
familiar with all the circumstances. 

If the members of the school are not 
converted, why are they not? The pastor 
can ask that question in his study, but 
he cannot answer it in his study. The 
answer is in the school. If the main 
object of the Sunday school is not at- 
tained, there is a reason for it, and that 
reason is mostly in the school itself. The 
Sunday school age is the age of Christian 
decision, and if decisions are not made 
then, something is wrong. It is of more 
importance to the church and to the 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Kingdom to find out what is wrong and 
to correct it than it is to raise debts, 
serve on committees, or coddle a lot of 
malcontents. If the science of right 
living is to do first things first, the place 
for the pastor to begin his church work 
is in his Sunday school. If he fails there, 
he is like a farmer who fails to plow and 
plant in the springtime. He will then 
be like the sluggard in Proverbs: "The 
sluggard will not plow by reason of the 
cold: therefore he shall beg in the harvest 
and have nothing." A man rarely feels 
the seriousness of a lost opportunity till 
it is lost beyond recall; and an evan- 
gelistic opportunity in the Sunday school 
is easily lost, for the young people who 
go through the Sunday school without 
becoming Christians rarely go to church 
afterward, and those who do not become 
Christians, drop out all too early. If 
they do not become interested in the 
Christian life before they reach the adult 
or even Senior Department, they will 
not be interested enough to remain long 
in the school. They may not be hostile 
to religion, but they will be indifferent 
24 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

to it, and the indifferent are about as 
hard to reach as the hostile. 

The pastor's evangelistic opportunity is 
not confined to his work in the Sunday 
school itself, but to his pastoral work as 
well. He will often find in the homes of the 
pupils their real problems. They will often 
tell their parents what they would not tell 
their superintendent or teacher, and they 
will talk more freely and frankly with their 
pastor, in whom they have confidence, out- 
side of the school than in it. He will some- 
times discover that young boys and girls 
long to become Christians and join the 
church, but their teachers never gave them 
an opportunity to talk about it or take 
steps toward it. It may be that the 
teachers have not discovered it, and for 
fear of embarrassing the pupils or causing 
them to stay out of the school they will 
guard against anything that might lead 
to immediate decision. If the pastor 
knows this, he can wisely give an oppor- 
tunity without reflecting on the teacher 
or embarrassing the pupil. 

Pastoral evangelism in the Sunday 
school is not only an opportunity, it is 
25 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

also a necessity. It is about the only 
place that young people of Sunday school 
age have in which it is easy or natural 
for them to make decisions for Christ. 

The family altar has largely fallen into 
disuse, in some cases almost of necessity. 
The industrial conditions which now pre- 
vail make it almost impossible to get 
the family all together at any one time 
during the day, either week days or 
Sunday. They go to business or school 
at different hours, they return at differ- 
ent hours. Some members of the families 
are home only over week-ends, some only 
at vacation time, when the home is not 
under normal conditions. Some have let 
the habit of family worship die out be- 
cause of indifference. Others never ob- 
served family worship, and so it is, that 
children get little religious instruction or 
incentive at home. When family worship 
is observed, it is both easy and natural 
to talk religion, and many a New Testa- 
ment lesson opens the way to emphasize 
the claims of Christ on the young lives 
in the home. 

Perhaps the most important part of 
26 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

the pastor's evangelistic opportunity is 
to safeguard what might be called child 
conversion. A blunder at this point may 
be followed by very serious consequences 
in later years, total religious indiffer- 
ence, or even hostility to religion alto- 
gether. There are many foolish notions 
about what constitutes a child's con- 
version. Many people expect far too much 
of it. They forget that they are not 
dealing with an adult. They must not 
expect the same consciousness of or re- 
gret for sin in a child that they do in 
an adult. 

The writer was told by a man who 
held to the necessity of child repentance 
and sorrow for sin as a condition of con- 
version that he himself had a very keen 
sense of and sorrow for sin when he was 
six years of age. That was a very un- 
usual, if not an unnatural thing. The 
child must have been abnormal, or else 
the home training or atmosphere was very 
defective and morbid. A child of six 
ought not to have a mature person's 
conviction of sin. Here the pastor must 
use great care and wisdom. He is best 
27 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

fitted to safeguard child conversion, and 
keep it from perversion. A teacher is 
sometimes converted at or after middle 
life. That conversion may have had 
unusual emotional accompaniments, from 
great depression to ecstasy, and the teacher 
may take that as a type to which all 
conversion must conform. Now, children 
under sixteen cannot and ought not to 
have such a conversion. There can be 
no such contrast in the child's conversion 
as in the adult conversion, and the child 
is often prevented from any conversion 
because the teacher takes his own con- 
version as the type. Anything less than 
that would be suspected by the teacher. 
With a well-reared, normal child, boy 
or girl up to fifteen or sixteen, or even 
seventeen or eighteen, there may be 
little that is unusual about conversion. 
Many of them come up to their teens 
taking for granted that they are Chris- 
tians, unless they have been the victims 
of some well-meant, but ill-advised teach- 
ing. What is needed now is a definite, 
willing, and intelligent commitment of the 
life to Christ, and the glad investment 
28 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

of it in Christ's service. The church is 
coming to more wholesome and normal 
views on child conversion. There may be 
here and there children not of more than 
ten who have a morbid sense of sin, and 
whose conversion may have many of the 
features of adult conversion; but they are 
so rare as to be almost negligible. There 
are also a few children who are religiously 
very precocious, whose religious expe- 
rience is far beyond their years. Almost 
any pastor will find an easy and success- 
ful way of dealing with these exceptional 
cases. They need special attention and 
direction. Handling the morbid or pre- 
cocious as though they were normal would 
work damage to them, and danger to the 
normal children. A diagram may illus- 
trate child conversion more clearly than 
an argument. Here consecration would 
be a better term than conversion, especially 
with B— C. 

Let A B equal the child from infancy to 
the age of intelligent moral choice, or as 
some would call it, the age of account- 
ability. During this period the child is 
saved by his innocency. If the child 
29 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

dies between A and B, most people are 
agreed to-day that he is saved. There 
ought never to have been any doubt 
about it, but large interests have often 
been sacrificed for small theological posi- 
tions. The child up to this time is un- 
consciously Christian, or is being carried 



in a saved state by the Grace of Jesus 
Christ, not by the child's choice, for he 
has been incapable of an intelligent moral 
choice. But at B, which age is very 
variable in different children due to 
temperament, training and environment, 
moral choice begins and the child makes 
a decision to remain in the Kingdom or 
to go out of it. He will either accept 
Jesus Christ as Saviour or not. If he 
does not, his life of committing sin begins. 
Before moral choice the child is saved 
30 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

by the unsought grace of God. After 
choice begins, the saved state is based 
on the consent of the child. That in- 
telligent consent to accept Jesus Christ 
as personal Saviour is child conversion. 
The decision is as real and definite as 
with an adult; and Christ accepts the 
responsibility to give grace and wisdom 
to culture the child life that is based on 
an intelligent choice and a glad consent 
to be a Christian, just as he does to for- 
give and culture the adult who makes 
the definite choice and gives the glad 
consent to be a Christian. The experience 
will be different, and ought to be, but 
the experience will exactly fit the per- 
sonality. It would be unnatural and un- 
reasonable to expect that the same phe- 
nomena would attend both cases. The 
child cannot have an adult's experience. 
It would be wrong if he did have it be- 
cause it would be unnatural. One of the 
most misleading and confusing methods 
of evangelism is to teach people to seek 
an experience, for the reason that no 
one person's experience can be the standard 
for every other body's experience. That 
31 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

is especially harmful when the seekers 
are of Sunday school age. 

The experience that follows the decision 
is not religion, but the effect of it on 
the person who became religious. A 
person does not get religion, he becomes 
religious. He comes into a personal 
relation of harmony with God; comes 
into right relations with Jesus Christ; 
in a word, to become a Christian is not 
to get a thing, but to know, love, and 
obey a Person, Jesus Christ, and it is 
that Tightness of relation that is to be 
sought rather than an experience which 
for the most part is a more or less rap- 
turous emotion. But neither the decision 
nor the ensuing Tightness of relation is 
dependent on the emotion or the lack 
of it. The decision is a far deeper and 
more important matter. It is the prin- 
ciple of obedience, love, and loyalty to 
Jesus Christ. 

So at B there may be very little emo- 
tional disturbance. Conversion in this case 
is not so much a matter of turning around 
as it is of going forward; therefore it is a 
consecration. It is not a change of direc- 
32 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

tion, it is a change of motive. The child now 
chooses to be governed by the will of God 
through devotion to Christ. The child who 
has been unconsciously following Christ now 
consciously and willingly follows him. The 
life, then, by a growth in the grace which 
Christ supplies, will follow the upward 
curve, B — C. The accompanying Chris- 
tian experience will harmonize with the 
temperament and need of the person. 
He will likely say that he was always a 
Christian, but at a certain time definitely 
accepted and declared Jesus Christ to be 
his Saviour. That decision is as real 
and vital as the decision that any person 
will make in becoming a Christian, but 
it will not have, of course, the experience 
of contrast that the one will who has 
made his decision late in life, or gone 
deeply into sin. 

On the other hand, the child who 
back at B decides to go out of the King- 
dom and either neglects or refuses to 
follow Christ, follows the curve B — D. 
That curve may drop quickly or slowly, 
but the course will be steadily away 
from the straight line B — E, which might 
33 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

be taken to represent continued innocency 
if such a course were possible. Much 
more will its course move steadily away 
from B — C. The person may plunge 
early and quickly into sin, or he may 
maintain a respectable moral level, com- 
mitting no gross sins, but he will be liv- 
ing a life of sustained rejection of Christ. 
Now, let us say that he is converted when 
he reaches the point D, and is lifted by 
conversion to C. He will be now only 
where he would have been if he had 
chosen Christ at B, but he will not be 
as well off as if he had stayed in the 
Kingdom. He will have lost the expe- 
rience B — C. Grace may do much for 
him, but Grace will not give him back 
the wasted years B — D, nor will it give 
him the satisfaction of never having 
broken with Christ. The only apparent 
advantage that he would have over the 
other would be a more dramatic conver- 
sion. The sharp contrast before and 
after his conversion would make his 
conversion a very striking experience. 
He could say, "Whereas I was blind, now 
I see," but the advantage would be more 
34 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

apparent than real, for he would have 
been better off if he had never been blind. 
There may be some joy in "making up" 
after a friendship has been broken, but 
that is the best friendship which has 
never been broken. 

Few thoughtful people will deny the 
necessity of child conversion or the fact 
of it; the point which must be guarded 
is the method of it. Child conversion 
meets all the needs of childhood. Christ 
can be trusted to do all that needs to be 
done by divine help for the children who 
are taught to commit their lives to him. 
But it is absurd as well as mischievous 
to expect or require an adult conversion 
of a child. It is right here that the pastor 
has the opportunity of safeguarding the 
religious life of his Sunday school chil- 
dren and also getting them to have that 
wholesome and natural view of religion 
that Jesus meant they should have when 
he said, "Of such is the kingdom of 
heaven." 

The pastor's preaching in the pulpit 
on the nature and manifestations of child 
religion will go a long way toward se- 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

curing the intelligent cooperation of both 
church and home in the spiritual culture 
and care of children. But the point that 
needs to be guarded most is what may 
be required as a condition or expression 
of child conversion. When anything more 
is expected than the nature and age of 
childhood would warrant, it is not help 
but hindrance. It is far better for the 
pastor to be misunderstood by a few 
adults who try to standardize all con- 
versions by their own, however well 
meant their position is, than to mislead 
a large number of young people so that 
they will profess an experience that they 
do not have, and therefore be more or 
less insincere, or else to prevent them 
from becoming Christians at all, because 
the "experience," as it is called, lies out- 
side of their world. A child's religion 
must be like a child's education, on the 
plane of his comprehension and needs. 
Nothing is more simple, beautiful, and 
workable than child religion, if it is 
not perverted by being made so mature 
that the child cannot grasp it. If the 
pastor wants to have a sane, real and 
36 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY . 

useful religion in the life of his young 
people, he must guard with the utmost 
vigilance the first steps in their Chris- 
tian experience. 



37 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 



CHAPTER II 

THE SUPERINTENDENT'S 
OPPORTUNITY 

The superintendent's opportunity for 
evangelism is better seen in his general 
attitude toward the supreme end of all 
Sunday school work than in any par- 
ticular thing that he may do or fail to 
do. His helpfulness is shown sometimes 
by simply taking himself out of the way; 
that is, in not being an obstructionist. 
If a superintendent is hostile to Sunday 
school evangelism, either because he does 
not understand it, or because he does 
not appreciate its importance, or because 
he cannot handle it, he will make Sunday 
school evangelism very difficult, for he 
can greatly embarrass the work either by 
interference or indifference; that is, he 
can so work his program that it will not 
admit of evangelistic effort or give evan- 
gelism an opportunity. If he is sym- 
pathetic toward Sunday school evangel- 
38 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

ism, general and specific, he will organize 
the school to that end. He will select 
teachers best qualified for that work, 
he will plan the weekly program with 
that end in view. He will talk with his 
teachers about it; he will have a list of 
all the unconverted members of the 
school; he will hold teachers' prayer 
meetings to keep them in a sustained state 
of preparation for that particular sort 
of work. The good effect of an evan- 
gelistic appeal or emphasis by the teachers 
is often dissipated by an incongruous 
closing exercise. The superintendent knew 
little, and perhaps cared less, for what 
went on in the classes, and he arranged 
his closing exercises without any refer- 
ence to what the teachers were trying 
to do. In the Sunday school the superin- 
tendent is the head master; and if he 
has strong leadership, he can make the 
school about what he wants it to be. 
The program for the weekly session of 
the school is very important. The open- 
ing and closing exercises which appear 
in Sunday school literature or in Sunday 
school hymnals are general, and may 
39 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

be taken only as a guide. They are made 
for use in any Sunday school, and from 
the nature of things can be adaptable 
only in a general way. There are special 
exercises for Thanksgiving, Missions, Tem- 
perance, Christmas, Easter, Children's 
Day, and for occasional patriotic services, 
and sometimes for Decision Day. But 
all these special days taken together 
occupy only a relatively small part of 
the Sunday school year, and they can be 
taken as exceptions for which room may 
be made in the Sunday schools' general 
policy. The trouble with many schools 
is that they have no policy. They meet 
in a perfunctory way and go through 
routine work with treadmill fidelity, but 
with treadmill monotony and deadness. 
Little is expected; less is done. 

The wise superintendent who is alive 
to his opportunity, who realizes that the 
supreme end of Sunday school work is 
the conversion and spiritual culture of the 
young life of the church and community, 
and that all Sunday school methods are 
means to that end, will plan his program 
for each Sunday with as much care as 
40 






AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

the minister prepares for his pulpit or 
the good teacher prepares the lesson. 
So that any Sunday, on a few minutes' 
notice, could be made a Decision Day 
with but very little rearrangement of 
program. A superintendent who does not 
plan his program for every week cannot 
hope to have anything that is worth while 
done in his Sunday school. Many superin- 
tendents are busy men, but no interests 
are more vital than the spiritual welfare 
of the young life committed to their 
leadership. If the superintendent believes 
that the end of all Sunday school work 
is spiritual, and that the program of the 
school is to help the teacher to make the 
spiritual appeal more effective, then he 
will make his closing exercise such that 
any spiritual impression made during the 
lesson can easily be conserved. A care- 
fully prepared program is even more im- 
portant with the graded lessons than 
with the international lesson system when 
all the school studied the same lesson. 
A brief review of the lesson by the super- 
intendent, pastor, or some other compe- 
tent person might not only save the day 
41 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

against much faulty and indifferent teach- 
ing, but could keep the evangelistic em- 
phasis naturally before the school. The 
graded lesson system does not preserve 
that unity in the school, and the program 
of the session must preserve the unity 
where the lessons do not. The superin- 
tendent may select a brief Scripture 
lesson, select the hymns, and keep the 
prayer offered by himself or by somebody 
else appropriate; then have the closing 
service complete the opening service, cli- 
maxing as nearly as possible the general 
truth of the day's teaching, but climaxing 
specifically the truth embodied in the 
Scripture lesson, the hymns, and prayer 
in the session program. 

It would not be well to stress the 
evangelistic emphasis every Sunday, but 
the whole atmosphere of the school should 
be kept so sympathetic toward it that 
it would be natural and easy for any 
teacher on any Sunday to make an evan- 
gelistic appeal in the class. In a Sunday 
school which is awake to its opportunity 
it will be a Decision Day every Sunday 
in some class. 

42 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

If Sunday school buildings were erected 
for serious Sunday school efficiency, there 
would be a large assembly room, like in 
the public school, where the opening 
and closing exercises could be held, with 
special rooms and full equipment where 
the teaching could be done. Under such 
conditions the worship part of the session 
could be planned so as to head up in 
several special or Decision Days, as 
Rally Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christ- 
mas, Easter and Children's Day. The 
program could be made progressive and 
cumulative. No matter what the lessons 
might be in the separate rooms, unity, 
progress, and purpose could be maintained 
in the worship part of the program. 
More could be done for Sunday school 
evangelism under such conditions than 
under the conditions that now obtain in 
many schools. The worship part of the 
program would be more like a church 
service, only much more brief, and in 
it the superintendent and pastor could 
cooperate very closely. Order could more 
easily be kept and the spirit of reverence 
cultivated, which is sadly lacking in many 
43 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Sunday schools. But as we have not 
ideal buildings — indeed, in most cases 
very badly arranged and worse-equipped 
Sunday school rooms — we must do the 
best we can under great disadvantages. 

A careless or thoughtless superintendent 
will often not only defeat good teaching 
but make evangelistic effort almost im- 
possible by allowing all sorts of interrup- 
tions to come to the teachers. He will 
permit visitors to be taken through the 
school during the lesson period, or the 
secretary or treasurer or librarian, when 
they have one, to move among the classes 
during the lesson period. That is as 
fatal to good teaching as it is to spiritual 
impression. The superintendent should 
take for granted that the teacher takes 
his task seriously, and should not allow 
him to be interrupted. A superintendent 
may also err by letting almost any visitor 
that comes along address the school. 
Many a fine impression made by the 
teacher is wholly dissipated by a ridiculous 
story told by a stray visitor who is asked 
to address the school. Of course it goes 
without saying that the superintendent 
44 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

should personally know the members of 
his school as the pastor does the members 
of his church. He should know something 
of their home life, their school or business 
— in a word, their life between Sundays. 
Much of this information could be gotten 
by the personal effort of the superin- 
tendent himself; much of it he could get 
from his pastor and his teachers. He 
can meet small groups of his teachers 
frequently to talk over the unconverted 
members of their classes, find out what 
the teachers are doing to reach their 
pupils, that will help him the better to 
plan his session program for the school. 
He will find many ways to help the 
pupils and seek for opportunities to talk 
to them privately about the Christian 
life. He can also guard the whole policy 
of the school so that the Christian life 
will be clearly the ideal and goal of Sunday 
school effort. This makes the office of 
superintendent very important and re- 
sponsible, but it is the opportunity of 
the office. 

Teachers' prayer meetings led by the 
superintendent are not only an important 
45 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

matter but one of the most useful things a 
superintendent can do to keep his teachers 
sympathetic toward Sunday school evangel- 
ism, and also to deepen their own spiritual 
passion to be soul- winners. The most whole- 
some and effective Sunday school revivals 
are often born in teachers' prayer meetings. 
Here the pastor can often be called in to 
give brief talks on personal evangelism. In 
this way many a timid teacher can learn 
the art of approaching members of her 
own class on the subject of the Christian 
life. 

If the superintendent feels that he is 
the lay pastor of the young life of the 
church, and that he is responsible for 
the spiritual leadership of his young 
church, namely, the Sunday school, he 
will leave nothing undone which he is 
capable of doing or getting done that 
will promote the spiritual welfare of the 
Sunday school. Giving the spiritual the 
right of way in the Sunday school with- 
out making it obnoxious or morbid is a 
very important matter — but it can be 
done by a superintendent whose whole 
heart is in the work and who fully appre- 
46 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

ciates the greatness and importance of 
his evangelistic opportunity. 

A superintendent may be pardoned for 
his just pride in his success in increasing 
the membership of his school; but he is 
to be most heartily commended for his 
efforts to increase the membership of 
the Kingdom by endeavoring to win or 
in having won to Christ every boy and 
girl committed to his care. No man has 
a better chance than he to put the mold- 
ing touch of Christian influence on the 
raw material of the kingdom of God. 

The superintendent may easily take 
advantage of missionary Sundays, which 
come every month in most schools, to 
emphasize evangelism. A good mission- 
ary program with an interesting speaker 
who could create missionary enthusiasm 
would go a long way toward making that 
Sunday a Decision Day. The heroism 
and glory of missionary work, ' the great 
need of increasing the number of workers 
in non-Christian lands, the opportunities 
in the wise investment of young lives in 
Christian service in mission fields in teach- 
ing, preaching, medicine, law, business, 
47 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

etc., could form the basis of a strong 
evangelistic appeal. The superintendent 
could utilize all such opportunities by 
planning a long way ahead for them, 
always keeping in mind their evangelistic 
value. He could secure prominent men 
who have made a success in business or 
the professions to address the school on 
the relation of character to success in life 
or some such topic as would show that 
the advantages of life are on the side of 
the Christian. If these men — lawyers, 
doctors, authors, business men, generals, 
travelers, etc. — made a success of life 
because they were Christians it would 
mightily predispose boys and young men 
who have a notion that religion hinders 
in life rather than helps to become Chris- 
tians. The superintendent could be on 
the constant look out for such men, as 
he might mingle with them in business 
or meet them at gatherings where they 
were speakers. In this way he could not 
only keep his school abreast of the live 
questions of the day, but also show how 
Christian character is related to the solu- 
tion of world problems. Christianity 
48 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

could be shown not only to be basic to 
the highest human happiness but also 
to the largest human success. That 
would make evangelism popular because 
it would make religion essential. 

The superintendent also can make a 
large indirect contribution to the spiritual 
success of the school. Teachers often get 
discouraged; pupils get dissatisfied or in- 
different; parents get offended because of 
something that they heard about their 
children in the school; departmental heads 
in the school may become jealous of one 
another, and compete in an unwholesome 
way rather than cooperate, and so dis- 
turb the whole spirit and work of the 
school. Now, when such conditions pre- 
vail it is the superintendent who must not 
only straighten out the tangles but sweeten 
the ruffled tempers and get all working 
harmoniously and with good will again. 
That will help to keep the school in a 
temper and attitude favorable toward 
evangelism. The superintendent must not 
only be a man of strong Christian charac- 
ter but a man of rare diplomacy, to keep 
the evangelistic spirit alive and effective 
49 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

in the school. When pupils love and 
trust their superintendent they will con- 
fide to him many of their early religious 
problems, and especially when they first 
go to business and are faced with some 
of the subtle temptations of double deal- 
ing. The superintendent can be of in- 
valuable help to them then. He can 
closely watch the effect of business on the 
boys and girls who have not become 
Christians, and any tendency that he 
may discover which will take them out 
of the school or from such wholesome 
influences he is prepared to check by 
having private conversations with them. 
He is to lay siege to that sixty per cent 
that go out of the school unsaved and 
devise means to stop that leak. He can 
have a small, carefully selected advisory 
council, made up of a few of his wisest 
and best teachers and the pastor, to help 
him make plans for safeguarding the 
spiritual life of the school. He may also 
have a like council of equally carefully 
selected parents to devise means of deep- 
ening the religious life in the home, and 
bringing them into close and sympathetic 
50 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

cooperation with the school. This council 
can study the home problems of the chil- 
dren, their work, recreation — in a word, 
their lives between Sundays — and make 
such provision for the children as will 
help to make permanent the religious 
impressions made on them in Sunday 
school. A larger interest in the home by 
the school reacts in a large interest in 
the school by the home. 

This may seem like making a large task 
for the superintendency. It is a large 
task, a heavy responsibility, but it is a 
great opportunity. To have from a hun- 
dred to three thousand young lives com- 
mitted to one's religious oversight creates 
a task, imposes a responsibility, but 
offers an opportunity. A superintendent 
cannot afford to take his work lightly, 
to imagine that a Sunday school will 
run itself, that children and young people 
will take the initiative in becoming Chris- 
tians and joining the church. The success 
of the school on Sundays will depend in 
a large measure on the thoroughness of 
the work done for it between Sundays. 
The best conducted Sunday school is the 
51 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

school that is best planned. The most 
successful Decision Day services are those 
that result from the constant and con- 
sistent evangelistic work that is done by 
pastor, superintendent, teacher, and par- 
ent, right through the year. But it is 
upon the shoulders of the superintendent 
that the chief weight of the planning, 
organizing, and conducting the school 
will rest. He must shape its policy, he 
must set its standard and define its goal; 
he must enlist the cooperation of teachers 
and pupils to maintain the standard and 
attain the goal. If thoughtless people 
will pity the superintendent, wise people 
will envy him. He is the lay pastor of 
a great young church, in whose member- 
ship are the young men and women whose 
moral leadership is the hope of the world. 
The superintendent who has taken his 
work as formal needs to see that it is 
vital; who has looked upon his office as 
a convenience must take it as an oppor- 
tunity to do a work for God and the world 
that will tell on the coming ages. The 
evangelistic opportunity of the superin- 
tendent must be reinterpreted in the 
52 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

light of the changed conditions of to-day 
and a new emphasis put upon it, if the 
Sunday school meets the challenge of 
the modern world. 



53 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

CHAPTER III 

THE TEACHER'S OPPORTUNITY 

The teacher is the key person in the 
Sunday school. He can help or hinder 
the work of the school more than anyone 
else. If the teachers cannot be swung 
into line, it will be hopeless to try any 
evangelistic work in the school. The 
teacher is the personal point of contact 
with the pupil. The end of all Sunday 
school teaching is to bring the pupil into 
right relation to God; in other words, to 
make the pupil a Christian. If the 
teacher clearly realizes this and is sym- 
pathetic toward it, Sunday school evan- 
gelism is easy, for in a more or less direct 
way the teacher will be doing that kind 
of work all the time. If the" teacher is 
either indifferent or hostile to it, he can 
make all the efforts of the pastor and 
superintendent of little value. He can 
even make the work of the home of small 
effect. 

54 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

Just because religion is so much neg- 
lected in the home the teacher has the 
first and best chance at the child for 
evangelism as well as cultural work. A 
wise teacher can keep the evangelistic 
emphasis strong right through the year 
without ever making it obtrusive. The 
subject of personal religion is always 
introduced, and needs only the special 
occasion like Decision Day to focus all 
the preparatory lines of personal efforts 
toward the actual commitment of the 
pupil's life to Christ. This work will 
not be a drudgery but a joy if the teacher 
takes an interest in the individual members 
of the class. Some teachers have been 
very successful in winning all their classes 
to Christ by making a prayer list of all 
the unconverted, and praying for them 
daily. Then whenever a good oppor- 
tunity presented itself to have private 
talks with individual members of the 
class about the Christian life, the teacher 
gladly took it. Some teachers who have 
won all members of one class to Christ 
ask for other classes in which were a large 
number of unconverted members, and 
55 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

when they have won them, they ask for 
still other classes. Such teachers are the 
most successful Sunday school evangel- 
ists we have. A few of them in any 
school would be of inestimable value, and 
if even a fair minority of such teachers 
were in all the Sunday schools of the 
church, church membership would quickly 
and easily be doubled. A teacher who 
has won the love and confidence of the 
members of the class can do almost any- 
thing that ought to be done with them. 
The teacher comes nearer to them than 
the pastor or superintendent does, and 
can do more with them and for them than 
they can. If pupils go through the 
school without becoming Christians, then 
teachers are more at fault than anyone 
else, at least in the school. It may seem 
hard on the teachers to place such heavy 
responsibilities on them, but that has a 
hopeful side as well, for if the pupils do 
become Christians, more credit is due 
the teachers than anyone else in the 
school. That balances the matter. 
""jToo much, however, must not be ex- 
pected of teachers. Many teachers are 
56 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

poorly equipped for the best kind of 
teaching, for they have meager educa- 
tion and very limited library facilities. 
Many of them are busy people and have 
little time to devote to lesson study. 
They are to be highly commended for 
their fidelity to their tasks under such 
serious handicaps. But while they may 
not be great successes as teachers from 
the standpoint of pedagogy, they may 
be remarkably successful as soul-winners. 
Fortunately, a passion for souls does not 
depend upon education, nor does even 
great sagacity in soul-winning depend 
upon it. Sunday school evangelism can 
be engaged in by teachers of all degrees 
of teaching efficiency. Other things be- 
ing equal, however, the best-trained 
teacher ought to be the best evangelist. 
The best evangelism does not come as 
a spurt occasionally in a teacher's expe- 
rience, but it inevitably comes out of 
the teacher's whole program of work. 
The lessons are prepared to that end. 
The evangelistic emphasis is progressive 
and cumulative. It is the general policy 
of the teacher, but specific opportunities 
57 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

are sought when the matter of personal 
religion can be brought directly to the 
pupil, or to the class as a whole. 

For the teacher the evangelistic prep- 
aration will come through three avenues. 
First, through the teaching of a book, 
the Bible. It ought to be taken for 
granted that one who assumes the respon- 
sibility of teaching a Sunday school 
class ought to know the Bible as a book, 
that is as a whole, not little isolated 
fragments of it. Unfortunately, that is 
not often true. Lesson helps have some- 
thing to do with it. Teachers do not use 
their Bibles as much as they should. 
They use their lesson leaves or journals 
instead. Many teachers never bring their 
Bibles to class, neither do the pupils, 
so neither teacher nor class gets acquainted 
with the Bible as a book either to under- 
stand it, love it, or have a reverence for 
it. That is a distinct loss in a Bible 
school. Many times the key to the 
lesson does not lie in the text which is 
on the lesson leaf, but in the context 
which could be profitably studied if the 
teacher and class had their Bibles in their 
58 



AX EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUXITY 

hands during the study of the lesson. 
A love and reverence for the Bible power- 
fully predisposes people, young and old, 
to follow its precepts. The Bible message 
conies to such people with an authority 
that is not questioned and with an appeal 
that is compelling. Nothing creates a 
love and reverence for the Bible iike a 
knowledge of it. It can be made the 
most fascinating book in the world to 
the pupils, if they are made familiar 
with it. It is a book of wonder that 
appeals to the wonder-loving age. It is 
a book of fascinating stories, of intrepid 
heroes, of lofty ideals, of great friend- 
ships, of fine courage, of practical con- 
duct, of inspiration and comfort. Too 
often the Bible has been a "far-off" 
book, that had little to do with life except 
to pronounce its judgments. Its divinity 
has been missed because it has not been 
made human enough to get near to 
people, especially young people. Young 
people too often think of it as a book of 
comfort and hope for good old people 
who are almost through with life. The 
picture in their minds of the use of the 
59 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Bible, is grandfather or grandmother in 
the old rocking chair with the open Bible 
in his or her lap, and they think that 
when they get old and infirm and are 
done with the world, have had their good 
times, made their fortunes and lived their 
lives, that they too will love the Bible. 
It never occurs to them that the Bible 
can be their inspiration while they are 
having their good times, that it is a book 
of ideals by which they can shape their 
career, a manual of practical conduct 
while they are making their fortunes, a 
challenge and incentive to best things 
while they are living their lives, the 
foundation of their broadest culture, the 
key to the world's best literature, art and 
music, as well as treasure house of hope 
and consolation for old age. They think 
of the Bible as too serious, august, austere 
for youth. It is a good book for the 
preacher to take texts from in the pulpit, 
a book out of which they must read a 
chapter daily to keep God from being 
angry with them, etc. They have not 
been made to see the beauty, manifold- 
ness, and power of that wonderful book 
60 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

that has built itself into the best life of 
the world. They think of the men and 
women of the Bible as extraordinary or 
superhuman beings, who had no expe- 
riences like ours, and therefore we can 
have no experiences like theirs. So the 
Bible is a book apart from the ordinary 
experiences of mankind. They think that 
God used to talk out loud and appear 
in visible form to the people of the Bible, 
but that God no longer comes near to 
men or speaks to them as he did in the 
olden times. The teacher has a rare 
opportunity to introduce the Bible in a 
new, practical, and captivating way to 
the alert and eager minds of the class. 
They can be made to hear God talking 
again to men and women and boys and 
girls. They can be made to feel, that 
God is as near to them as he was to 
Miriam and Samuel, to David and Paul, 
to Mary and Lydia. They must be made 
to feel that God speaks by his word 
through the preacher of to-day, as cer- 
tainly as he did through prophet or 
apostle, if he is equally consecrated. 
His inspiration may not be in the same 
61 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

degree, but he must have the same kind 
of inspiration to interpret the mind of 
God out of the Bible that prophets and 
apostle's had to reveal the mind of God 
in the Bible. The Bible is a book full 
of God, and it meets all the needs of all 
our life for religious purposes. The 
teacher can make the members of the 
class feel at home in the Bible, and see 
how natural and right it is to walk with 
God, and work for God, and love and 
trust God now as in Bible times. That 
keeps the evangelistic opportunity always 
at the front, and it can be used specifi- 
cally almost any time without going far 
afield to introduce it. Some one has put 
it something like this: "Those who are 
at home in the Bible live next door to 
God." It is easy to talk personal re- 
ligion to those who are familiar with the 
Bible. The examples of high religious 
living are numerous in the Bible, and can 
be used easily to illustrate the beauty 
and power of the life lived in the will 
of God. But there are also many examples 
of those who were indifferent or hostile 
to God, and the tragedy of their lives 
62 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

can be pointed as warnings. A large 
intelligent use of the Bible both by teacher 
and pupil makes the evangelistic appeal 
easy and natural at any time. That is 
a very great advantage, particularly to 
a timid teacher. 

The teacher easily can show that the 
Bible is not a Sunday book, but a book 
that is intimately related to everyday 
life. It has its message for home, busi- 
ness, school, recreation, sickness, friend- 
ship, war, politics, marriage, worship — 
indeed, it is a book of life. That makes 
the Bible so useful and practicable a book 
that its counsels can be heeded in all 
matters because it deals so sanely and 
helpfully with all matters. The Bible has 
a program for children, youth, middle 
age, old age. The teacher can make 
this practical use of the Bible so attrac- 
tive that it becomes an indispensable 
book. 

If our young people in the Sunday 
school were taught the practical value of 
the Bible to all life, their faith in it would 
not so often be shaken when they meet 
some of its academic difficulties in college. 
63 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

The teacher may not be able to master 
the critical problems of scholarship that 
have grown up around biblical study in 
recent years, but he can point out the 
practical moral value of the Bible that 
remains, whatever becomes of the critical 
problems. The moral excellence of the 
Bible can be lived, and its spiritual coun- 
sels followed whether all of its academic 
problems can be solved or not. It is not 
the good fortune of many of our Sunday 
school teachers who must do evangelistic 
work in the Sunday school to be thor- 
oughly familiar with the findings of mod- 
ern scholarship on the Bible. It would be 
very desirable if they could be, but that is 
out of the question. It is more important 
for the average Sunday school teacher who 
is not technically trained, if he is to be 
a successful Sunday school evangelist, to 
know the dynamics of the Bible than to 
know its academics; that is, to feel its 
religious power rather than to have mas- 
tered its critical problems. The pupils 
who are to be won to Christ ought to be 
won before they reach the age when the 
critical difficulties of the Bible become 
64 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

serious to them. The critical problems, 
so far as they are important to a better 
understanding of the Bible, may be care- 
fully handled by the pastor when he is 
training those already won to Christ in 
their preparation for church membership, 
and in the Christian character. But a 
knowledge of these technical matters is 
not essential to the winning of the pupil 
to Christ, and that is the supreme end 
of the Sunday school teacher's work. 
Even with adult classes it is not necessary 
to go into the critical questions of biblical 
scholarship in order to show the reason- 
ableness and necessity of the Christian 
life, however interesting and profitable it 
might be in the interpretation of the 
lesson from week to week. Love and 
service to God and man do not depend 
on the last findings in biblical scholar- 
ship. It would be a great thing if all 
Sunday school teachers could be first-class 
biblical scholars. There ought to be a 
department in our theological seminaries 
where Sunday school teachers could be 
trained in biblical scholarship for their 
task, just as the ministers are trained 
65 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

for theirs, and it is earnestly hoped that 
such a provision will soon be made. 
The only point that is raised in this 
book is that the immediate work of 
Sunday school evangelism by the teacher 
does not have to wait on that special 
training. The teacher who loves God, 
and loves his Bible, and loves his class, 
can make such use of the Bible as will 
make it an open door of opportunity 
for evangelism in his class. 

Critical questions of biblical interpre- 
tation may be very important and profit- 
able for Christians in their lifetime study 
and use of the Bible, but they are not 
requisite to that most important of all 
life choices — the choice of Jesus Christ 
as a personal Saviour. A personal expe- 
rience of the saving grace of Jesus Christ 
in the heart is the most powerful incentive 
to thorough and diligent Bible study. 
But no teacher can inspire such a love 
of Bible study in his pupils or lead them 
to a hearty and willing acceptance of its 
precepts who only uses it in an indif- 
ferent and haphazard way himself. He 
needs to study it, live in it till he be- 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

comes saturated with it and gets so 
familiar with its whole range and outlook 
that he gets a biblical imagination; that 
is, till he can see its places, know its 
people, feel its truth — in a word, till the 
Bible becomes instinct with life to him. 
Then he can make it a book quivering 
with life and interest to his pupils. He 
can make them hear the old prophets 
speak again; he can make them walk 
with Jesus, until the Bible becomes the 
most real book in the world to them. 

But how can a teacher get the time 
to do it? One half of the time that is 
spent daily on the newspaper, in a few 
years would do it. A pocket Testament 
read on the trains to and from business 
would greatly help to that end. One 
chapter in the morning and one in the 
evening would surprise one on how much 
information it would bring. Rising ten 
minutes earlier in the morning, and re- 
tiring fifteen minutes later at night, 
would help toward that end. A wise use 
of unoccupied moments would work won- 
ders in giving the teacher not only a 
wide field of biblical knowledge but a 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

ceaseless joy in Bible study. To spend 
a half hour on Sunday with Amos, Isaiah, 
or Paul would make it easy to ask if 
God ever called any of the pupils to a 
life of service. A lesson period spent 
with Jesus in some of the beautiful inci- 
dents of his life would make it easy to 
ask the pupils if they wanted to help 
Jesus make their country the Holy Land 
and their city the Holy City. To follow 
Paul on one of his missionary journeys 
would make it easy to ask if some one 
in the class did not receive the call to be 
a missionary. A happy familiarity with 
the Bible and the ability to make it 
vivid to the class gives the teacher a con- 
stant opportunity to make the evangel- 
istic appeal. 

The Bible makes religion and service 
so real and vital that the appeal to 
religion and service is always opportune. 
It may be that some of the bright boys 
and girls of high school age may be puz- 
zled by the low ethics of some parts of 
the Old Testament. If the teacher is 
familiar with the Bible as a whole, he can 
quickly correct the low ethics of the Old 
68 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

Testament with the Sermon on the Mount, 
and those hard pictures of the war God, 
or the severe Judge of the Old Testament, 
by the revelation of a loving and for- 
giving Father God, in Jesus Christ. The 
Bible interprets and corrects itself if you 
give it time and are patient till it has 
said its last word. We do not judge the 
excellence of a fruit before it is ripe. 
Neither should we pronounce on parts 
of the Bible till we get the whole message 
before us. We will find that most of the 
hard pictures belong to the earlier stages 
of revelation; that is the green stage of 
the fruit. Its richness and sweetness as 
a ripe fruit of revelation, are found in 
Jesus Christ. 

That broad and sympathetic use of 
the Bible in the class will give the teacher 
a weekly opportunity for quiet and tact- 
ful evangelism in the class, which will 
climax with great success on Decision 
Day. 

The second avenue of approach is to 
exemplify a life; that is, the Christian 
life. The best way for the teacher to make 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

the Christian life attractive to his pupils 
is to live his own Christian life attrac- 
tively. Such a life makes its own appeal. 
It is a constant challenge. An example 
makes a much more powerful appeal 
than a precept does, especially to young 
people. If the pupils see the principles 
of right living which are laid down in 
the Bible exemplified in their teacher's 
life, so that the Christian life is a real 
one that can be lived every day, they 
are more than half won already. To 
many people the real Christian life seems 
like a beautiful ideal that all people 
might covet, but that nobody can live. 
Happy is that teacher who is his pupils' 
ideal of the Christian life realized. Per- 
haps no hour of the teacher's life in the 
whole week will be more sorely tried 
than the class hour in the Sunday school. 
To keep good-natured, patient, firm, self- 
mastered under provocation, tactful and 
sympathetic; to have a keen sense of 
humor and a high sense of reverence, 
is to go a long way toward showing the 
pupils what a strong, sensible, noble, and 
unselfish life the Christian life is. That 
70 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

will also mightily predispose the pupils 
toward accepting that life for themselves. 
When a pupil says, "If my teacher is a 
Christian, I want to be one," a great 
deal has been accomplished by the teacher 
in living the truth of the lessons he teaches. 
Young people do not pay much attention 
to theory, but they are profoundly im- 
pressed by examples. One regiment of 
soldiers from overseas marching through 
the street will do more to fire boys in the 
"teen" age with a soldier spirit than the 
committing to memory of a whole manual 
of arms. They want action, that which 
catches the eyes and stirs the imagination. 
They are in the age of adventure, and 
it is the concrete that appeals to them. 
To them the Christian life seems like a 
weak, other-worldly life, without the red 
blood, fine courage and dash that are 
so much needed in the rough-and-tumble 
life of to-day. They think that a Chris- 
tian might teach a Sunday school class, 
lead a prayer meeting, or visit a hospital, 
but to play football or swim the Hudson, 
or imperil his life in some great adven- 
ture, never! A real Christian seems to 
71 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

a boy of fourteen about half human, 
half angel; yet it is at just that age that 
the lad is most susceptible to the Christian 
appeal. More boys and girls at that age 
could be won to Christ if they saw more 
of virile Christianity. Here the teacher 
has a great opportunity to show his pupils 
that the Christian life is the strongest, 
bravest, most unselfish, most virile, most 
human life there is. It has all that dash 
and daring of the world's greatest heroes; 
it has the clear judgment and far-sighted- 
ness of the most successful business men. 
It can fight battles, play games, endure 
hardness, and yet be tender, patient, 
peace-loving, and forgiving. It can be 
shown to be the ideal life. 

Teachers, therefore, should be chosen 
with the greatest care, not only for their 
ability and willingness to teach but for 
their stalwart, rugged, and exemplary 
Christian life. A teacher will have great 
difficulty in impressing the noble religious 
truths of the Bible on his pupils, if his 
own life belies his teaching. He ought 
to talk about the Christian life as nat- 
urally and easily as he does about the 
72 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

weather. He needs to show his pupils 
that his religion is not put on for Sunday 
purposes, but that it is his life, as natural, 
wholesome, and attractive as his health 
is. Religion is not his — it is himself. 
The silent force of his own noble Chris- 
tian life is constantly molding the lives 
of his pupils Godward. Religion is so 
much a matter taken for granted by the 
teacher that the pupils never think of 
him as obnoxious or obtrusive when he 
talks about it. He just lives it naturally, 
strongly, beautifully, and everybody knows 
it. A teacher may not be able to have 
a fine education, but he can have a radiant 
Christian experience, and he can make it so 
winsome that everybody who knows him 
will want to have his kind of religion. Com- 
mon sense and sympathy are great assets 
in the teacher's equipment as a soul- 
winner. 

The pupils more often than not think 
of religion in terms of "restraints" and 
"don'ts." They think it is all a matter 
of giving up and self-denial, and that 
does not strongly appeal to them. The 
teacher can show by his own life the 
73 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

liberty and privilege side of religion. 
Nothing is to be given up but sin, nothing 
is denied one but wrong. The teacher 
can so enter into all that is right and 
good, can have and enjoy all that is 
beautiful and true, that there seems to 
be little place or need in his life for the 
"don'ts" and "restraints" of which the 
pupils are afraid. They see him have all 
the joys and none of the regrets of life. 
He has so much to do and enjoy that he 
never feels the "restraints" of religion. 
Now, when he sits before his class all 
the fine theory of his teaching is vitalized 
and enforced by the power of his noble 
example. It will not be difficult for him 
to lead his class into his kind of Christian 
living. Much as the pupils will study 
their Bibles opened and made fascinating 
by the teacher, they will study him more. 
The third avenue of approach is to 
introduce a Person. That Person is God. 
Nothing is more important in preaching 
or teaching than to give congregations 
and classes right views about God. To 
most people God does not appear to be 
anywhere around, and they are glad of 
74 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

it, for they would be afraid of him if he 
were. They do a good many things that 
they do not want God to see, and say a 
good many things that they do not want 
God to hear, and think a good many 
things that they do not want God to 
know. So they are glad that God is not 
around. God must be brought down out 
of the sky and so related to the life of 
the pupil that his joy rather than his 
terror will be in God's nearness. The 
teacher out of his warm personal expe- 
rience of God must talk about him as 
though he were right there in the class 
— and so he is. To many people, both 
old and young, God only means the word 
of three letters, G-O-D. They have no 
sense of his personal presence. Young 
children do. To them the personal pres- 
ence of God is very real, unless they have 
been falsely taught. Their faith is the 
most beautiful in the world. Their prayers 
are real conversations with the God who 
they feel is very near. But as they grow 
older their skies begin to lift, and their 
God recedes till he is lost in the dim 
somewhere, nobody knows where. If the 
75 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

home and Sunday school closely co- 
operate, even though the sky lifts, God 
does not recede, and children never lose 
their sense of his presence. That is one 
of the greatest things that can be done 
for a child — never to let him lose his sense 
of nearness of God. But in most cases 
God has slipped away by the time chil- 
dren reach the intermediate age, so the 
teacher must reinterpret God to them, 
so they will come again to have the 
sense of his presence. The teacher can 
often make the pupils feel the nearness 
of God by the way he prays to him. He 
talks to God as if he were as near as any 
of the pupils. The teacher can frequently 
offer a minute prayer during the lesson 
period, when he is teaching some matter 
of personal religion. He can say, "Let 
us ask God about it," and then talk to 
a present God as naturally as to a present 
friend, only with a reverence becoming 
such a closeness to God. Let those young 
people see that God is to be loved and 
trusted, not to be feared and shunned. 
The teacher can show them that God is 
so infinitely good and gracious that all 
76 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

they can ever do for him will not repay 
his goodness to them. The most reason- 
able thing in the world for them to do 
would be to give him their lives. God 
as Father, and Christ as Saviour and 
Brother, are to be made so near and so 
real that it would be, a most unnatural 
thing not to become a Christian. Too 
often young people think of Christ as 
the Christ of the New Testament, back 
in the first century, before the crucifixion. 
They have their conception of him as he 
was then. But they need to be taught 
how strong and brave he was as well as 
how gentle and loving. He is to be made 
their Hero of strength as well as their 
Ideal of love. Young people want a hero. 
Art often has represented Jesus as though 
he were good but not strong, gentle but 
not brave. That is not the impression 
that Jesus made on his age. Near the 
close of his life he asked his disciples 
what men's impression of him was, whom 
they took him to be; and the disciples 
gave the impression that Jesus had made 
on the men of his day; some said that he 
was Elijah, some Jeremiah, some John the 
77 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Baptist — three of the most outstanding 
types of courage, strength, and inde- 
pendence known in their history (see Matt. 
16. 14). Jesus impressed men with his 
strength and courage. The teacher can 
easily present Jesus not only as the Saviour 
of his pupils but also as their ideal Hero. 
The teacher deals with hero-worshipers, 
but here is One who is a Hero and can 
be worshiped. The teachers can render 
great service to the boys and girls in the 
Sunday school by giving correct ways of 
thinking about God. They need to real- 
ize the nearness of God as an all-power- 
ful loving Father, and of Jesus, not as a 
first-century Hero, but as a present-day 
Hero-Saviour who is setting up his king- 
dom of righteousness, justice, freedom, 
brotherhood, and peace in the world, and 
who wants these young people to help 
him do it. A right view of God and 
Christ is an evangelistic appeal itself 
which few can resist. The call to a noble 
heroic service of kingdom-building also 
can be made a powerful appeal to young 
people bubbling over with energy and 
enthusiasm. And when those appeals are 
78 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

combined and offered by a teacher who 
has opened up the Bible in its beauty and 
power, and who himself exemplifies all 
that is rugged and noble in the Christian 
life, the result can only be one thing — 
that most, if not all, of the class will 
make a strong and intelligent decision for 
Christ. That kind of teaching and teach- 
ers will make Decision Day inevitable, 
and Sunday school evangelism a natural 
and constant experience in the school. 

No insistence is here made on technical 
scholarship, or any of the unusual in- 
tellectual or social gifts that only a few 
possess, but just on those homely qualities 
that any Sunday school teacher who has 
consecration, tact, patience, and diligence 
can cultivate and use. It is not an im- 
possible nor an improbable task for the 
willing teacher who wants to bring his 
class to Christ. This, then, is the third 
avenue of approach — the introduction of 
a Person. 

The Bible is the precept, the Life is 

the example, and the Person is the power 

in the evangelistic approach to the pupil. 

The right use of the teacher's evangelistic 

79 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

opportunity in the Sunday school would 
revolutionize the religious life of the 
school and quickly double or treble the 
membership of the church. 

It is difficult to estimate the good that 
could be done in advancing the Kingdom 
if pastor, superintendent, teacher, and 
parent all cooperated to save the whole 
young life of the church, Sunday school 
and home for God. There is no reason 
why this should not be done. It must 
be done if all these forces are to meet 
the challenge that Jesus gives to them 
to meet the great needs, and settle the 
serious problems of this restless and 
dangerous age. The hope of to-morrow 
lies in the evangelization and culture of 
those who to-day are twenty and under. 



80 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

CHAPTER IV 

THE PARENTS' OPPORTUNITY 

The cooperation of the home with the 
Sunday school in the matter of evangel- 
ism is so important that it is surprising 
that more is not made of it. The home 
turns its responsibility over to the Sun- 
day school and often thinks that the 
matter ends there. It really only begins 
there. The Sunday school takes the 
initiative in the religious training of the 
child, but its work will be greatly hin- 
dered, even thwarted, if the home does 
not do its full share of follow-up work. 
The Sunday school has become a ne- 
cessity in the spiritual interest of the 
child because family worship, with its 
attendant religious instruction, largely has 
fallen into disuse in these days. This" 
is not wholly due to indifference on the 
part of the parents; unfortunately, it is 
in many cases, but not in all cases. The 
present industrial conditions make it im- 
81 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

possible for many families to all be to- 
gether at any one time, either week-day 
or Sunday, to make family worship possi- 
ble. If the family is large and there is 
any considerable difference in the ages 
of the children, they go to business or 
school at different hours and return at 
different hours. Some are away most 
of the year at school. Some who are in 
business get home only occasionally for 
a week-end. So there can be no habit 
of family worship established under these 
conditions. That leaves religious instruc- 
tion very largely to the Sunday school 
and makes it more and more difficult for 
the parents to approach their children on 
the subject of religion. That makes 
cooperation with the Sunday school funda- 
mental if the child is to receive the full 
measure of religious culture to which he 
is entitled. The parents and teachers 
can keep closely acquainted with what 
is being done in the home and in the 
Sunday school. If the parents know what 
the teachers are doing for the religious 
welfare of their children in the Sunday 
school, Sunday afternoon would be a 
82 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

good time for the parents to follow up 
the work of the teacher. The subject 
would always be introduced, and it would 
be easy to talk about it. If the teacher 
knew that the child would get sympathy 
and help at home, he or she could give 
the child some questions to ask and have 
answered at home. Some helpful course 
of Bible-reading could be planned by the 
teacher that would supplement in the 
home the instruction in the Sunday school. 
The suggested readings would be on 
spiritual culture and service rather than 
along the line of the lesson. It would be 
devotional to help home religion rather 
than a Sunday school session in the home. 
If the aim of the teacher was the con- 
version and culture of the child, and if 
the parents would cooperate with the 
teacher — and, surely, they ought to co- 
operate in a work like that — these home 
readings would bear on that point rather 
than, follow the usual course of "Home 
Readings" adopted by the Sunday School 
Lesson Committee. We are thinking here 
of how the home and Sunday school can 
cooperate in the work of Sunday school 
83 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

evangelism. If cooperation can be se- 
cured in that important work which is 
the most vital part of Sunday school 
work, cooperation in all other matters of 
Sunday school and home work can easily 
be secured. The incidental things will 
not be neglected if the main thing is well 
cared for. If parents can be interested 
in the Home Department, that will be 
a link binding them to the school and 
keeping them in sympathetic touch with 
all of its work. An occasional visit by 
the parents to the school, especially on 
any day when evangelism is to be em- 
phasized by the superintendent or the pas- 
tor in the session program, would be help- 
ful. Then the parents could easily and 
naturally follow up that work afterward. 
It might be well if on that day any definite 
stand had been taken by a pupil, for his 
teacher to call that afternoon, or go home 
with the parents and talk the matter all 
over together, and make the decision a 
permanent thing. Often parents think 
that teachers bring undue pressure to bear 
on the pupils in the matter of decision, 
and that the children are embarrassed 
84 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

before the class. This the parents will 
resent, and perhaps ought to if it is true; 
but if parent and teacher understood each 
other better and cooperated more intel- 
ligently and heartily, no such opposition 
would come from the home. Parents 
ought to be consulted about their children's 
church membership, indeed, also about 
their Christian life; otherwise opposition 
or indifference in the home may undo 
all the good that was done in the Sunday 
school. It is a matter of common knowl- 
edge that parents as a rule are more 
reticent to talk about the matter of 
personal religion to their children than 
about anything else. That is particularly 
true in homes where there is no family 
worship. Parents are often deeply in- 
terested in their children's religious de- 
velopment and long to see them Christians, 
but they do not know how to introduce 
the subject, and are sometimes afraid 
they might not be able to answer their 
own children's questions, or meet their 
objections if they raised any. Many 
times the children are far better educated 
than their parents, and so parents fear 
85 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

that they might not be able to answer 
their children's arguments, or explain to 
them how to become Christians. They 
may know little of the process themselves. 
Then, too, parents are often hesitant about 
trying to win their children to the Chris- 
tian life because they feel that their own 
lives are not consistent and that they 
are poor examples of Christian living. 
Their children see them when they are 
off their guard and at such close range 
that their piety seems to be at a dis- 
advantage. At any rate, parents do not 
often talk freely and frankly to their 
children about their souls. 

On the other hand, the Sunday school 
teacher is constantly dealing with re- 
ligious matters, and it is easy to press 
I the claims of Christ on the pupils, so the 
parents have noble substitutes in the 
teachers of their children, if they will 
make all the home conditions as favorable 
as possible, to the work the teachers are 
doing. Taking the children to church and 
talking over the sermon at home, and 
showing how natural and happy and use- 
ful a life the Christian life is, will go a 
86 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

long way toward making home religion a 
natural topic of conversation. In this 
way children can be atmosphered in re- 
ligion to such an extent that decision 
for Christ, as soon as that can be intel- 
ligently made, will be the inevitable thing. 
If nothing is done at home to stimulate 
religious interest, an appeal to a boy or 
girl to become a Christian comes as a 
shock, and they will wonder what will 
happen at home if they become Chris- 
tians, or, if no objection is made, what 
help they can get. Does it seem too 
mature a step to take? Will father or 
mother tell them that they are too young 
to understand what they are doing and 
that they had better wait? Or will they 
say: "I wish your teacher would mind 
his own business. When it is time for 
you to join the church we will tell you"? 
Parents often object to their children 
becoming Christians because they think 
it will prevent them from having a good 
time, and it will make them old-fashioned 
and put them at a social disadvantage. 
Therefore it is better to wait till they are 
grown; then, if they want to take upon 
87 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

themselves the "restraints" of religion, it 
is their own affair and not the parents' 
fault. So they discourage children at the 
period of greatest spiritual susceptibility 
in their lives from becoming Christians. 
Then, after they leave the Sunday school 
and church too, and perhaps go wrong, 
the parents will blame the church and 
Sunday school for not holding their chil- 
dren to them after they are grown. The 
thing they do not seem to understand is 
that at just the time their children could 
be most easily won to Christ and built 
into the church they were the only ob- 
stacles to their children doing that very 
thing. 

This false notion about the "restraints" 
of religion grows out of the unreasonable 
theory that a child in his teens should 
have the religious experience and the 
seriousness of a man of forty. As a 
matter of fact, the only life that is under 
a restraint that makes it unhappy and 
puts it at a disadvantage is the life that 
is not Christian. Religion to the soul is 
what health is to the body, just as full, 
robust, exuberant, radiant, natural, ener- 
88 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

getic, as perfect health is. Who would 
think of a parent objecting to a child being 
healthy because it would put him under 
restraint and at a social disadvantage? 
They do not see that what they ask for 
is to have their children physically healthy, 
but spiritually invalid. The Christian 
is denied nothing but sin. He is free to 
all that is right. He is the only free 
person. The crime against the child is 
that he has been denied by false teaching 
and unreasonable prejudice a type of 
religion adapted to his age, understand- 
ing, and needs. A child's religion is a 
child's religion, not a man's religion. It 
will express itself in a child's ways, but 
it will meet a child's needs and grow 
with a child's growth. The Sunday school 
sometimes has been criticized because it 
insisted that child religion should fit the 
child. The opposing theory seemed to be, 
better for the child to have no religion 
unless he could have a full-orbed adults' re- 
ligious experience — which, of course, would 
be unnatural and absurd. Who wants a 
child to be a religious monstrosity? Yet 
that is what he would be if he had a 
89 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

forty-year-old religious experience in a 
sixteen-year-old heart. 

Parents can be of incalculable help to 
the Sunday school if they will take the 
same attitude to the children's religion 
that they do to their education. They 
would not allow their children to have col- 
lege work in the grammar school, nor 
would they refuse to have them go to 
grammar school because it was not college. 
We seem to deal sensibly with everything 
but religion. 

Sometimes parents object to their chil- 
dren becoming actual Christians and join- 
ing the church because they themselves 
were received into church membership 
when they were children before they under- 
stood what it meant, and they were never 
taught anything about the Christian life. 
So they grew up in the church as nominal 
members without ever feeling that they 
were really Christian. Unfortunately, that 
has been too often true, but not because 
they were received into church member- 
ship at a tender age, but because they 
were neglected by pastor, Sunday school 
teacher, and parents. Pastors and Sunday 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

school teachers to-day are more alive to 
the importance of the religious culture 
and the Christian nurture of the young 
than ever before, and the parents never 
had such an opportunity to get the best 
help for their children in church and 
Sunday school, as now, if they will make 
use of their own opportunity to cooperate 
with pastor and Sunday school teacher. 

The home interest and cooperation often 
can be secured by letters from the Sunday 
school and visits by the teachers. The 
superintendent can also greatly help in 
tying the home to the Sunday school and 
enlisting its cooperation if, whenever a 
Sunday school pupil makes a decision for 
Christ, he, either by letter, or, better 
still, by a visit if possible, would show 
his kindly interest in the child and his 
joy in the great decision; and he could 
show the parents what an important step 
was taken, and how a most useful career 
might issue from that decision, if the child 
received the proper help and encourage- 
ment at home. The decision may be a 
work of the Sunday school, but a whole- 
some, natural growth in the Christian life 
91 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

is the work of the home. It is pathetic 
how many young Christians have to 
struggle up into the Christian life with- 
out any help at home, and often with a 
good deal of hindrance. It is said that 
about eighty per cent of the accessions 
to the Protestant churches of this country 
come from the Sunday schools; but that 
only from thirty to forty per cent of the 
Sunday school members become Chris- 
tians. The blame here is not altogether 
with the teachers. It is partly shared by 
the home. If there were better home 
training, the Sunday school would yield a 
far higher per cent of its membership to 
the Christian life. The home ought to 
be more interested in the conversion of 
its own children than the Sunday school 
can be in the conversion of its members. 
When there is hearty cooperation between 
teacher and parent, or, more broadly, be- 
tween the Sunday school and the home, a 
far greater work can be done in quiet and 
normal evangelism, which is more effective 
and permanent than any high-pressure type 
can be. The period of greatest religious 
susceptibility in the child would thus be 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

capitalized for Christ. This is as it should 
be, and it shows what could be done if all 
parents, especially those who are Christians, 
and Sunday school teachers, took more in- 
terest in Sunday school, or young people's 
evangelism. Probably the greatest leak 
in the Sunday school in the middle and 
latter teen age is due to the gap between 
the Sunday school and the home. The 
Sunday school feels the perplexity of the 
problem more than the home does, but 
the home ought to feel it more than the 
Sunday school does. Parents say: "Our 
children are no longer interested in the 
Sunday school; they will not go. The 
teachers are dull, or the lessons are not 
interesting, so we will not force them to 
go for fear they will get disgusted with 
religion and church altogether." This is 
largely because when the young people 
were most ready for Christian decision 
nothing was done for them; then follows 
a rather sharp reaction which takes the 
form of religious indifference, or even 
hostility. The most difficult age to deal 
with is the mid-teen age, say from 15 to 
18, when the arguing capacity is in excess 
93 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

of the judgment. Yet it is at this age that 
most decisions for Christ are made. Here 
young life needs direction, not repression. 
That abounding energy and budding logical 
faculty, those love-making instincts and 
rugged spirit of comradeship, which, if not 
rightly used, will become a vicious gang 
spirit — all this will express itself in some 
form. Better conserve these forces for the 
Christian life than to let them run wild 
just when the judgment is least competent 
to appreciate value or make wise decisions. 
This becomes a serious home problem which 
might be solved had teacher and parent 
gotten together one or two years earlier, 
when the boys or girls only needed a little 
encouragement to make the decision which 
would save them many regrets and their 
parents many heartaches. 

Children are God's to begin with, and 
they remain his till they deliberately break 
away from him; and they do that for the 
most part because they do not realize 
its gravity, and at the critical point no- 
body warned them not to, nor encouraged 
them to make an open decision for Christ 
and come into the wholesome environ- 
94 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

ment of church life. The parents do not 
often notice the change which almost 
comes overnight, when the child who up 
to a certain point seemed so trustful, 
devout, prayerful, suddenly becomes in- 
different or flippant, and religious things 
after that seem to him absurd or intoler- 
able. When that takes place parents have 
missed one of the most important oppor- 
tunities that will ever come to them to 
help their children become, or continue 
Christians. The father forgets that by 
the very fact of fatherhood he is the 
priest of the family, and the mother 
forgets that to her children she is the 
most perfect incarnation of God. The 
Sunday school is only a help or a supple- 
ment to home religious training, not a 
substitute for it. But it is a most valuable 
supplement and the home should make 
the most of the Sunday school help, and 
not forget to do its own part. 

To children God is very real and Jesus 
is their dearest friend. They can be 
easily kept to that wholesome faith if the 
parents are themselves consistent Chris- 
tians, and make religion a joyous priv- 
95 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

ilege in the home rather than an irksome 
task. Children can easily be taught, 
especially those who go to Sunday school, 
to do their work about the home and in 
the day school, for Jesus Christ's sake. 
It will be the same set of duties done in 
much the same way, but with a different 
motive. They should be taught that 
religion is their whole life, not the little 
part of it that they give to church and 
Sunday school on Sunday. Their life be- 
tween Sundays is as certainly religious as 
on Sunday. They can be taught to study 
their day-school lesson for Jesus' sake as 
well as their Sunday school lesson; that 
they can play for Jesus' sake as well as 
pray. 

Religion should never become a morbid 
experience with anybody, but especially 
with children. With them it should be 
the most natural, joyful, winsome thing 
in the world, a great love-friendship for 
Jesus Christ. This is for the most part 
a home task. But it is also a home oppor- 
tunity of the most blessed sort. If re- 
ligion is only for Sunday, it is a detached 
thing that has only a small place in life. 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

Religion is life at its best whether in child- 
hood, youth, or manhood. It is the health 
and soundness of the soul in friendly and 
loving relation to Jesus Christ. There is 
nothing stilted or unnatural about it. 
It is joyous without being frivolous, 
serious without being somber, courageous 
without being rash, loving without being 
sentimental, devotional without being 
sanctimonious. Piety is not oddity, but 
normality. Parents sometimes err when 
family worship is a home habit, by making 
it too long and too serious to be attractive 
to the children. When children dread 
family prayers they show their first symp- 
tom of religious indifference or hostility. 
A good time for family worship is to have 
it at the close of the morning or evening 
meal, or both, before the family leave the 
table. The New Testament is best adapted 
for family worship. The children may take 
turns in reading, or the father read. This 
reading can be followed by a brief prayer. 
If prayers are offered twice a day, they 
may be brief. Family worship need not 
take more than five minutes twice daily, 
and as part of the meal it will not be 
97 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

subject to the interruptions that would 
come at other times of the day. The 
beauty and sanity of the Christian life 
thus could be taught by precept and 
example. This would keep the religious 
atmosphere of the home so congenial that 
young Christian life could easily grow in 
it. Such home conditions would be most 
helpful to the Sunday school work, and 
in turn the Sunday school would greatly 
aid the home. Parents have not yet fully 
sensed the greatness of the opportunity 
to win their own children to Christ, or, 
better still, to prevent their children from 
ever leaving Christ. 

One thing that parents overlook is that 
if children are not religious, it is not the 
Sunday school they are reflecting, but the 
home. If their bodies are underfed, they 
show it. Equally so if their religious nature 
is underfed, their dispositions will show it. 
The child has an inalienable right to 
religious instruction in the home. It is 
an obligation of parenthood. The state 
will not allow a child to grow up illiterate. 
It forces the parents, if they are unwill- 
ing, to send their children to school for 
98 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

a certain period. The state does it first 
in the interest of the child; the child is 
entitled to a fair chance in the world. 
Second, the state does it for its own 
protection. The uneducated become not 
only a burden upon the state but a menace 
to it. But the state leaves the religious 
culture of the child, which is more im- 
portant than his education, wholly to the 
home or church. A man with education 
but without goodness may be a far greater 
menace to the state than the uneducated. 
Putting the weapon of education in the 
hands of a bad man makes him doubly 
dangerous. The man's moral character 
will determine whether he will make a 
right or wrong use of his education, and 
his religion will determine his character. 

There is, perhaps, no neglect more 
common among children than their re- 
ligious neglect. Parents do not seem to 
realize that children have religious rights, 
and that parents are not free from serious 
blame if they do not recognize those 
rights and endeavor to meet the obliga- 
tions which those rights lay on them. 
The mere hearing of a child's prayers at 
99 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

night does not discharge the whole re- 
ligious obligation of the home. 

If children know little of religion, it is 
because they see little of it. If children 
are surprised when approached on the sub- 
ject of religion, it is because they are 
taught so little of it at home. Children 
ought to think and talk as naturally about 
religion as they do about study or play. 
The Sunday school works at a disadvan- 
tage when its work is wholly unlike any- 
thing the child hears or sees in the home. 

If parents expect strong religious char- 
acters to be developed in their child by 
one half -hour's religious teaching a week 
in the Sunday school, they expect too 
much both of the teacher and the child. 
One half-hour's play, or one half-hour's 
school a week would never make either a 
healthy or an educated child. Yet parents 
often seem to think that a Sunday school 
should do in one half-hour a week for 
the child's soul as much as the day school 
teacher does in from twenty to thirty 
hours a week for the child's mind. Re- 
ligion shows its divinity in that so little 
of it goes such a long way. 
100 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

One of the things which the home must 
learn in the matter of child religion is 
that children are as capable of being good 
as early as they are of being "naughty.'* 
If they have the right teaching and 
environment, they will find it as easy to 
be good as they do to be bad, and they 
will be far happier in it. If children were 
taught religion at home as they are 
obedience and manners, every Sunday 
school lesson would be an appeal to their 
religious natures to bring them to their 
best. The danger to the child in the 
home that is not awake to its opportunity 
is that his religion will be ignored or 
suppressed. 



101 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

CHAPTER V 

DECISION DAY 

The question may be asked, "If pastor, 
superintendent, teacher, and parents all 
cooperate and make full use of their 
evangelistic opportunities through the 
year, what need is there of observing a 
Decision Day? Would not every Sunday 
be a Decision Day in some class or de- 
partment?" The answer is that such 
conditions would make a Decision Day 
inevitable. They would precipitate a 
Decision Day just as continuous evangel- 
ism precipitates special evangelism in the 
church. That sort of work is cumulative 
and tends to climax at given intervals. 
Xature's method is a process with a climax, 
seed time and harvest. So in grace the 
method is a process with a climax. The 
more thorough the process the more cer- 
tain the climax. Old-time revivals were 
said to "break out," but they were not 
accidents. The preparation may have 
102 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

been, and often was, unconscious. In 
most, if not all, such cases some person 
or group of persons who were mighty in 
prayer had long been praying for a real 
and powerful spiritual awakening. A great 
many quickly "worked up" revivals are 
nothing more than a burst of emotional 
enthusiasm which lacks spiritual depth 
and permanency and whose reactions often 
leave the church worse off than if there had 
been no revival. In such cases a climax is 
forced without a due process. The climax 
is automatic and inevitable if the process 
has been thorough. The use of all the 
opportunities cited above will produce a 
climax, perhaps more than once a year, 
which can best be utilized by means of 
Decision Days. 

Two good seasons for Decision Day 
would be Christmas and Easter. Both of 
these seasons are intensely religious by 
association, and the grounds for appeals 
at such times are both strong and natural. 
The general preparation for Decision Day 
which might be observed at Christmas 
time should begin on Rally Day some 
time late in September. In the program 
103 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

for that day the goal and ideals of the 
work for the Sunday school year might 
be stated in some effective way, so as to 
create an expectancy that spiritual re- 
sults would be reached during the year. 
The main business of the school should 
be set forth by pastor or superintendent 
so that no special effort in evangelistic 
work at any time during the year would 
come as a surprise, much less would it 
seem like a trap sprung upon the school 
without notice. Anything that looks like 
a trap or trick is not only unworthy of 
so great and dignified a matter as the 
Christian life but it defeats its own end. 
People young or old despise traps and 
tricks especially in the matter of religion. 
If people are to be won to Christ — and 
that is the best way to make Christians — 
they must be won on a consciousness of 
their own need and the solid merit of 
the Christian life itself. Whatever is done 
must be done above board with an hon- 
esty and frankness that needs no apology, 
explanation, or defense. In dealing with 
young people, everything ought to be done 
that can be, to make it easy and natural for 
104 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

them to become Christians. Religion 
should be put to them positively, not nega- 
tively. They must be shown what they get, 
what they become, and what they will be 
able to do, rather than what they will have 
to give up. They must be made to see that 
all they have to surrender is what would 
ruin them if they did not surrender it, 
and that they take on all that is best in 
possession, in character, and in service. 
In a word, it is what they can and may 
do rather than what they must not do 
that must be emphasized. More than half 
of the "don'ts," perhaps all of them, 
would disappear from life, if we only put 
"do" often enough in their places to leave 
neither room nor desire for the forbidden 
things. This is especially true with young 
people, who have so much energy that 
they must spend it in some way; if not in 
usefulness, then in mischief. 

Many classes in Sunday school are the 
despair of teachers, not because the boys 
and girls are vicious but because they are 
unemployed. The teacher has no program 
for them, and they are too full of life to 
be idle, so they get into mischief. That 
105 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

mischief may become a habit and may 
become vicious if let alone. If so, it will 
be almost impossible to make any re- 
ligious impression on such a class. They 
will have lost respect for the teacher and 
interest in religion and reverence for God. 
The Christian appeal to these energetic 
young people must be a challenge to a 
right and constant use of all that fine 
energy that otherwise might be abused, 
which would be worse than wasted. The 
objective of the school should be clearly 
stated on Rally Day, namely, that we are 
to seek, and be, and do the best. An- 
nouncing that high aim at the opening 
of the school activities in the autumn 
could easily and naturally be emphasized 
many times and in many ways through 
the year. It would never seem out of 
place or far-fetched. It easily could be 
shown that loyalty to Christ is the realiza- 
tion of that high aim. The best in all 
things is to give him the preeminence in 
all things (see Col. 1. 18). General prep- 
aration, then, for the Christmas Decision 
Day should begin in September, on Rally 
Day. 

106 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

Special preparation should begin not 
later than Thanksgiving Day. Much 
could be made of what we should be 
thankful for, and as the best expression 
of gratitude is service, the dedication of 
the life to Christ in service would be the 
best way to translate thanksgiving into 
thanksZm?2<7. The teachers could talk 
freely and frankly about the goodness of 
God and the love of Christ, the beauties 
of gratitude and the opportunities for 
service, to their classes, and thus prepare 
the way for more direct and specific ap- 
peals later on. 

Several weeks before Decision Day the 
pastor and superintendent should get to- 
gether and agree on a policy and a pro- 
gram, so that later on there would be no 
misunderstanding or cross purposes which 
might defeat the aim of Decision Day. 
The superintendent and pastor must work 
together if the best results are to be 
secured on Decision Day. The policy and 
program once settled, then the superin- 
tendent is to swing his official staff of 
secretaries and treasurers — librarians too, 
if any — into line. They must plan their 
107 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

work so that nothing will interrupt the 
Decision Day program. The pastor and 
superintendent should each have a list 
of all pupils from the Junior Department 
up, who are not professed Christians or 
members of the church. These will form 
the special prayer list for pastor and 
superintendent. 

For several weeks before Decision Day 
there should be held brief teachers' meet- 
ings for prayer. Each teacher should 
make a prayer list of all members of his 
or her class who are not Christians and 
pray for them daily. This method has 
rarely failed to produce surprisingly suc- 
cessful results. Praying for people by 
name, brings one into rapport with them, 
and creates an interest in their highest 
welfare better than any other one thing 
known to the writer. There is no better 
cure for prejudice, impatience, dislike, or 
even hatred, than to pray daily and by 
name for the person one does not like. 
Many a teacher by that same method 
has come to love a class, or the mischief- 
makers in the class, who up to that time 
he has disliked or dreaded, with a passion 
108 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

that would leave nothing undone that 
could be done to win them to Christ. 
Whenever a teacher's interest in the class 
dies out nothing will revive it like prayer 
for the pupils. Without this preparation 
Decision Day will have little permanent 
success, no matter how skillfully the 
program of the day itself may be con- 
ducted. 

As Decision Day approaches, the pastor 
should give brief talks at the teachers' 
prayer meetings, on the art of soul- 
winning. Many teachers will be anxious 
to win their classes to Christ, but do not 
know how to do it. Much of the success 
in getting decisions on Decision Day will 
depend on the thoroughness of the work 
preparatory to that day. The teacher 
ought to have a frank private talk with 
each member of the class who is not a 
Christian, about the Christian life. When 
that is done many decisions will have 
been made before Decision Day comes, 
and on that day they will make an open 
declaration of the decision already made. 
Getting decisions beforehand is almost a 
guarantee of success in the public service 
109 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

on the day itself. The pastor should know 
the names of all who make those previous 
decisions, and the classes to which they 
belong. The power of suggestion rightly 
used is a great asset in evangelistic work, 
and nowhere more so than with people 
of Sunday school age. The open con- 
fession of Class A will often crystallize 
decisions in Class B. If a group of natural 
leaders in the school make a decision for 
Christ, almost always a large number of 
their followers will do the same thing. 
They wanted to all along but lacked 
courage till they saw their leaders take an 
open stand for Christ. The pastor can 
tell the teachers how to utilize all these 
small things, which when taken together 
become important factors in Sunday school 
evangelism. Teachers and pastor must be 
in the heartiest cooperation if the best 
results are to be secured. It may often 
happen that a few of the teachers will not 
attend the prayer and instruction meeting. 
When such is the case the pastor and 
superintendent should see those teachers 
privately first, and then get them to- 
gether and swing them into line, even if 
110 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

Decision Day has to be postponed two or 
three weeks. If the teachers are not a 
unit in the work, the greatest success 
cannot be reached. Some teachers will 
resign rather than do this sort of work. 
That is an easy way to get rid of inefficient 
teachers. Take them at their word — 
accept their resignations. The main busi- 
ness of the Sunday school is the salvation 
and religious culture of the whole member- 
ship of the school, and the teachers who 
will not cooperate in that work are ob- 
structive forces in the school, and the 
sooner they leave, at least as teachers, the 
better. The specific preparation for De- 
cision Day will also provide for a visita- 
tion of the homes involved, so as to 
enlist the parents in the heartiest co- 
operation with the teachers. 

When Decision Day arrives, an hour 
before the service, the entire Sunday 
School Board should be called together by 
the pastor for prayer and for a final ex- 
planation as to just what each one is to 
do in the program of the day. Every de- 
tail is to be made perfectly plain so that 
there will be no misunderstanding in 
111 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

carrying out the program. If decision 
cards are used, and in many cases they 
will be, they should be drafted in very 
simple form. On one side there could be 
this simple statement, "I have an earnest 
desire to become a Christian." Then 
leave a space for the name and address. 
On the other side there could be a little 
stronger statement: "I accept Christ as 
my personal Saviour, and shall endeavor 
to live a Christian life"; then follow the 
name and address. Ordinarily, too much 
is expected of the use of the card. It is 
made a substitute for conversion, and 
little is done after the card is signed 
except to enroll the parties as preparatory 
or full members of the church. The use 
of the card is to introduce the personal 
help that is to be given by pastor or 
teacher to this young person, who through 
the signing of the card has invited it. 
The card is an introduction to personal 
work. If personal work does not follow, 
then the signing of a card will be of little 
value. The pastor or superintendent 
ought to make it very clear just how he 
wants the cards used. Perhaps the most 
112 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOETUNITY 

effective way to use cards in a Decision 
Day service, is to give each teacher enough 
cards to supply the whole class, no matter 
how many or few of them may be con- 
fessed Christians. A very important 
instruction is to tell the teachers to keep 
the cards in their desks or Bibles, 
and not to hand them out to the class 
till they are told to do so by the leader 
of the service, who in most cases should 
be the pastor. As a rule, he is the best- 
equipped person to do this, although many 
superintendents are very successful in 
Decision Day work. But even after the 
most specific instructions are given, some 
teachers will hand out the cards as soon 
as the pupils come in, and they will have 
made up their minds what they will do 
with the cards before they are explained 
and before the address will furnish the 
right motive for signing them. Very little 
may be expected from those classes. That 
is a misuse rather than a use of the cards. 
Great emphasis should be put, in the early 
meeting, on following exactly the program 
explained and agreed upon. The hymns 
for the opening service should bear strongly 
113 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

on the decision service that follows. After 
the opening service class records should 
be made, the offering taken and all other 
work of the school that belongs to the 
weekly routine, should be done, so that 
nothing will interrupt the decision service, 
or detract from it after the service closes. 
The message should be a simple, brief, 
clear appeal to the young people to sur- 
render their lives in perfect loyalty to 
Jesus Christ both for his sake, and in 
order that they may help him save the 
world. Character and service should lie 
at the heart of the appeal. A challenge 
to the heroic both in character and service 
rarely fails to get a hearty response from 
young people. At the close of the address 
the leader takes a decision card, reads it 
and explains it; reads both sides, explains 
the more general and specific forms. 
Meanwhile the teachers take their cards 
and distribute them to all the members 
of their classes, so that no one will be 
embarrassed by being made conspicuous. 
The leader can then say that those who 
are already members of the church need 
not sign them, or better still say, "Those 
114 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

who are already church members write 
church member on the card." When this is 
done a few minutes may be given for the 
teachers to talk to their pupils. Then be- 
fore the leader asks for the signing of the 
cards, either he or some one who can do it 
well, should offer a brief prayer asking 
God's help and blessing on what is about 
to be done. The cards may now be 
signed. This may be followed by a brief, 
prayer asking God to set his seal upon 
what has been done and to help those 
who made their covenant with him to 
live up to it. 

This is but one form for expressing 
decision for Christ. Pupils may stand or 
come forward, or record their decision 
some other way, but the general plan 
would be the same. After the school is 
dismissed all who have made a decision 
either by signing a card or otherwise, 
should be invited with their teachers to 
remain a short time for further counsel 
by the pastor and prayers by the teachers 
for those who have made decisions in their 
classes. That will tie the teacher closely 
to the pupil in sympathy and personal 
115 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

interest. The pastor should have a list 
of all pupils who made a decision and 
get in touch with them individually and 
collectively as soon as possible. The most 
important work of Decision Day begins 
after the day itself is over. After the 
Christmas Decision Day is over, begin to 
plan for the Easter Decision Day, in much 
the same way, except that the emphasis 
here should be put on the Conquering 
Christ, through the resurrection, just as 
the Christmas emphasis would be on the 
Condescending Christ through the Incar- 
nation. But the preparation, both general 
a^nd specific, would be the same. 
/ In all evangelistic work the most neg- 
lected part is the most important part, 
namely, the "follow-up work." This is 
especially important in Sunday school 
evangelism, /the home, school, and church 
must all be interested in the Christian 
culture of these young Christians. Par- 
ents, teachers, and the pastor should co- 
operate in the Religious training of these 
young people. After Decision Day those 
who committed themselves to Christ 
should be put into training classes, the 
116 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

older ones in some evening class, preferably 
Friday evening, as that would be most 
free from school duties. This class, if 
possible, should be under the care of the 
pastor. / The younger ones could meet 
some afternoon. This class could be led 
by the deaconess, or perhaps some capable 
Sunday school teacher, who may be will- 
ing to devote an afternoon a week to the 
training of these children in Christian 
character and in fitting them for church 
membership, y The most serious loss to 
church men&ership has two causes: first, 
those who have come into church member- 
ship and then dropped out. Those who 
drop out or lapse are for the most part 
those who have not been properly trained, 
or who have not been trained at all for 
church membership. They come into the 
church without any adequate knowledge 
of either the privileges or obligations of 
church membership. They seldom take 
any part in church activities, give little 
to the support of the church, know little 
of its standards or ideals, care little for 
the honor of church membership, and so 
after a while lapse for want of interest 
117 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

because after their conversion they were 
not trained. So they are soon lost to the 
church, or if they do not drop out alto- 
gether, they remain in the church as 
nominal members, with little satisfaction to 
themselves and are of no use to the church. 
The other cause is the failure to build 
into the church those who have been 
converted. Young people make their 
decision in the Sunday school, but nobody 
looks after them, and very many of them 
lapse without ever reaching church mem- 
bership. Nobody takes the initiative 
toward their training, so they are lost 
to the church. The lapse from church 
membership and the failure to reach 
church membership could be almost en- 
tirely prevented if there was better 
"follow-up" work after Decision Days 
and other times of personal commitment 
to Christ. It will mean a great deal of 
work for somebody, but it will be the 
most blessed and fruitful work that that 
somebody will ever do. 
^in the general work of conservation of 
Decision Day results, the home, Sunday 
school, and the church should contribute 
118 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

their part, but the specific work of per- 
sonal training in the interest of con- 
servation, must be done by some indi- 
vidual, and the best fitted person to do 
this work is the pastor himself. He ought 
to do it himself, or else have such over- 
sight and direction of those who do, 
that the work will be thoroughly and 
effectively done. Many times the coming 
of the children into church membership 
will mean the establishment or reestab- 
lishment of family worship in the home. 
Teachers can make themselves invaluable 
as advisers and helpers to the members 
of their classes who become Christians. 
An occasional prayer service in the school 
participated in by the teachers for a few 
Sundays after Decision Day will greatly 
aid the religious impression made on 
Decision Day itself. 

For the training of preparatory members 
a large number of useful books are now 
published, but it is the leader's use of 
the book or books, and especially his use 
of the Bible in the training class, that is 
of the first importance. No class will 
profit very much by any book, no matter 
119 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

how excellent it may be, if it is only put 
into their hands to read. The principles 
of the Christian life, the great truths of 
the Bible, the obligations and privileges 
of church membership, and rewards of 
service, must be made clear, vital, and 
practical, by the teacher. Thus the re- 
sults of Decision Day may be conserved 
for the church and the Kingdom. 



120 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

CHAPTER VI 

NET PROFITS 

To meet the opportunities mentioned 
in the foregoing chapters it was seen that 
a great deal of painstaking work had to 
be done by a good many different people; 
not for an occasional event one or more 
times in the year, but steady, patient, 
unselfish work, day after day right through 
the year. The questions now arise, Is it 
worth while? Will it pay? That will 
depend on one's standard of values. 
There will be but little immediate financial 
return for the energy expended. There 
may be but little immediate return even 
in gratitude. There may be but little 
immediate return that will satisfy per- 
sonal ambition. But there is no time or 
energy ever invested in any enterprise 
that will make a greater final return than 
the time and labor invested in saving the 
boys and girls of our homes and Sunday 
schools to Christ. It will mean more for 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

the church and world than any other one 
thing that can be done. It will do more 
for law and order, for national prosperity, 
for public virtue, for good citizenship, 
for democracy, for industrial adjustment 
and good will, for world peace, than any 
of the workers either now or ever will 
realize. 

Of course there will be much drudgery 
in it. Much of it will be thankless and 
disappointing, but that is true in all 
work that has far-reaching consequences. 
It is not easy to toil, and patiently wait 
before one sees the visible rewards of his 
toil. Some of those who toil most suc- 
cessfully will die before they see the 
splendid returns on their investment of 
brain and heart. But there is no invest- 
ment of life that is more sure of a return 
in life's higher values than that. Teachers 
may not see it that way, and may get 
discouraged and give up, but that would 
be the greatest misfortune and blunder 
of their lives. This is a work that cannot 
be forced without peril. Men must learn 
something of the patience of God in the 
work of soul-winning. Souls must not be 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

coerced. Love cannot be coerced, and 
evangelism is love's work, or it is not 
genuine. The writer knows a half dozen 
brilliant and very successful ministers, who 
as boys in the Sunday school in their 
teen age were the terror and despair of 
their teachers. Perhaps some of the 
teachers died before they even knew that 
their kindness, patience, and Christian 
fidelity later on led these restless boys to 
Christ. Since that time they have won 
hundreds of souls to Christ, built churches, 
shaped public opinion, written books, led 
reforms, swayed multitudes, gone to mis- 
sion fields, comforted and strengthened 
thousands of sorrowing and weak people. 
How little did those teachers dream of 
the service they were rendering to God 
and the world when they were breaking 
their hearts to hold those unpromising 
boys in the Sunday school! Had they 
not held them, those restless, energetic 
boys might have found expression for 
their zeal in evil works, and they might 
have been star criminals of their day. 
If the roll could be called of the Christian 
ministry, and all the vast multitudes saved 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

and helped by that ministry, should rise 
with them to bear witness as to how 
Sunday school teachers either personally 
led them to Christ, or gave them the 
first incentive toward the Christian life, 
few teachers would ever again be dis- 
couraged. Some one has yet to write 
a book, perhaps a library, on the con- 
tribution that the Sunday school teachers 
have made to the kingdom of God. What 
of the godly parents who kept their 
children from ever straying out into sin? 
What of mothers' prayers and fathers' 
counsels? It is almost impertinent to 
ask, "Does it pay? Is it worth while?" 
But what of the teachers who had 
classes for years who never offered Christ 
to their pupils — the classes that went 
out not only unsaved, but unapproached? 
What opportunity lost! What rewards 
missed! Yet there are some teachers 
who make no effort to win their pupils to 
Christ; who hold their classes as an 
accommodation to the superintendent; who 
have little interest in teaching, and less 
in the spiritual welfare of the pupils; 
who dread the teaching hour and are glad 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

when it is over; who do not study their 
lessons or know their Bibles, or pray for 
their pupils. Let us hope that their 
number is few. These lines are written 
so that if by chance this little book should 
fall into the hands of any such teacher, 
he might realize what an opportunity 
he is missing, and what a grave respon- 
sibility he is treating very lightly. Will 
it pay? Nothing pays so well. 

The church of to-day was the Sunday 
school of yesterday. Does the church 
pay? To ask the question is to answer 
it. But our net profits are small com- 
pared with what they ought to be. Too 
much is wasted. We waste nearly sixty 
per cent of our material, and that sixty 
per cent, or much of it, is taken by the 
competitors of the Sunday school. That 
is not good business. No manufacturer 
would think of letting his competitor 
take the good material he wasted, and 
work it up into goods that would put 
him out of business. But out of the forty 
per cent saved we build eighty per cent 
of the churches; that is, about two fifths 
of the Sunday school builds four fifths 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

of the churches. Suppose we saved the 
five fifths of the Sunday school — and they 
are the easiest people to reach and save 
that the church will ever have — what a 
church there would be to-morrow! To 
save five fifths of the Sunday school 
would mean to double the church mem- 
bership. The church would go out of 
existence if it were not for the Sunday 
school. Where will the Centenary's mil- 
lion of conversions come from? Eight 
hundred thousand of them will come 
from the Sunday school. Will it pay? 
Nothing pays so well. 

Our waste in young life, which is about 
the only raw material we have for evan- 
gelism, is appalling. In many of the 
great modern industries colossal fortunes 
have been made out of by-products, 
which hitherto had been wasted. They 
became net profits. If the sixty per 
cent waste in the Sunday school were 
saved, what a fortune in life and service 
could be made for the Kingdom! Teach- 
ers are foremen in the departments where 
these wastes occur. The superintendent 
of the school is the superintendent of all 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPOKTUNITY 

the departments where the waste occurs, 
and is knowing to it. The pastor is the 
president of the company, and knows 
that far more raw material is wasted than 
is worked up; and yet, Sunday school 
evangelism, which is to stop this waste, 
is not taken with sufficient seriousness to 
make it the settled weekly policy of the 
school, in which all the heads of depart- 
ments, as in a successful business, would 
not only be in frequent consultation but 
in the heartiest cooperation. Yet in 
spite of all the waste, the net profits are 
great. If the war taught this country 
to conserve food and clothing and fuel, 
to save money — in a word, to stop waste 
for the good of the suffering world — 
ought it not also to have taught the 
church, by the terrible sacrifice of young 
life, to conserve the rising generation that 
is to take their places, and make them 
as "fit" as possible to do the world's 
work in the interest of the kingdom of 
God? In industry it is material plus 
skill that stops waste and makes values. 
In Sunday school work it is intelligence 
plus goodness that stops waste and makes 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

values. We have been so well satisfied 
with what we have gained that we hardly 
have noticed what we have lost. A teacher 
may feel happy over saving twenty per 
cent of his class, but does not feel humil- 
iated over losing eighty per cent of it. 
The spirit of conservation now abroad in 
the world certainly ought to be taken 
seriously by the church. The Sunday 
school is not only a school of methods, 
it is also a school of origins. Not only 
the policies but the principles that are 
to be operative in the church to-morrow 
must have their rise in the Sunday school 
of to-day. Where is the place to teach 
larger benevolence in the church, greater 
missionary interest, better citizenship, 
more successful methods of church work, 
fuller knowledge of the Bible, stronger 
emphasis on religious education? The 
Sunday school. W T here are students for 
the ministry to be sought? life work de- 
cisions for other forms of Christian activ- 
ity to be made? In the Sunday school. 
There is where beginnings are made whose 
ends are for the weal of the church and 
the world. The life must be saved to 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

God before the best service can be ren- 
dered to man. The whole matter most 
naturally and reasonably lies back in 
Sunday school evangelism. The net profits 
will be in proportion to thoroughness 
with which the business is carried on, 
waste stopped, and material worked up 
into useful forms. 

An important question that every Sun- 
day school teacher might ask himself is, 
"What net profits have I turned into the 
kingdom of God as the result of ten years 
of teaching and personal endeavor to win 
my pupils to Christ?" Just the asking 
of the questions might stir up a new 
passion in the heart of many an indifferent 
teacher. The fact that national pro- 
hibition has removed one of the most 
dangerous menaces to the young people 
ought not to lessen a whit the endeavor 
to save the sixty per cent of the pupils 
who are said to go out of the school un- 
committed to Christ. The removing of 
the menace creates a better atmosphere 
and environment in which evangelistic 
work can be done, and makes it more 
inexcusable if it is not done. That is 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

not a well-conducted business which only 
pays its overhead expenses. That is not 
a successful army which only parades and 
skirmishes. That is not a successful 
Sunday school which only goes through 
routine forms and does not get the young 
people who are fresh, eager, earnest, com- 
mitted to Christ. It is a far more dra- 
matic thing to get an old gutter drunkard 
saved than it is to keep a fine boy from 
going to the gutter; but it is far less 
valuable both for the church and for 
the world. It is good to save the soul 
after the life has been lost, but it is far 
better to save the life so that the soul 
will not get lost. To conserve seventy 
years of life to the church is better busi- 
ness and better religion than to reclaim 
ten years to the church after sixty years 
have been wasted. If half of the money 
and effort that are expended to get people 
back into the church who were allowed 
to slip out of it were used to keep them 
from going out of it, there would not be 
so many broken-hearted pastors and par- 
ents, nor would there be such a tragic 
waste of life in the world. The largest 
130 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

gains and the largest losses to the church 
are in the Sunday school. 

It is not a good thing for the church 
to be so busy in trying to get what it 
has not that there is no time or strength 
left to hold what it has. It is not good 
business to spend so much time polish- 
ing up old rusty material that it allows 
its bright, new material to rust out for 
want of use. The church should not 
lessen its evangelistic effort to reach those 
out of the church, but it should double 
its efforts to conserve those who are in 
the church. It is impossible to fill a tank 
by having a pipe running ten gallons a 
minute into it, as long as there is a pipe 
at the same time drawing twelve gallons 
a minute out of it. The thought of such 
a thing would be absurd. The tank will 
soon fill if the leak is stopped; so will the 
church. It takes far less effort to keep the 
boys and girls in the church than it does 
to get them back into it after they have 
gone out and found other interests and 
companions that may have no relation 
to or interest in the church. While they 
are in the church their interests and 
131 



. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

friends are there. The duty of the church 
is to make it worth while for the young 
people to stay in it. 

As a nation we have been great wasters. 
It was said some years ago that our 
Western farmers wasted more grain than 
was raised in all of France. We are 
learning better things in these days. 
Our national savings have taken two 
forms: First, Reclamation. By artificial 
irrigation, thousands of acres of land 
which had been considered not only use- 
less but hopeless desert have been re- 
claimed from their desert waste and made 
into gardens, pastures, and grain fields. 
Experimental stations have been estab- 
lished to show the possibilities and profits 
in "dry farming" when water could not 
easily be gotten. The productive area of 
the country has been greatly increased by 
reclamation. Second, Conservation. Much 
land that years ago would have been 
allowed to "run out" has been conserved. 
Our waterways, forests, orchards, useful 
birds, big game, etc., are being conserved 
as they never were before. Then better 
sanitary and factory laws, better work- 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

ing conditions, the elimination of child 
labor, have been conserving human life; 
and with better schools, homes, and rec- 
reation centers the efficiency and happi- 
ness of mankind have been greatly in- 
creased. The net profits of these two 
forms of saving, reclamation and con- 
servation, may not be easily tabulated, 
but they would be surprising if they 
could be. The same two methods of sav- 
ing have been practiced by the church, 
but the main emphasis hitherto has been 
on reclamation. The chief effort has 
been to reach and save those who went 
deeply into sin; those who had become 
human deserts. That has been a great 
and blessed work. The church may well 
be proud of it, and the world may be 
grateful for it. The church must neither 
cease nor even lessen its reclamation 
work. But that work is too slow and 
disappointing to give much hope either 
to the church or to the world, if it is the 
only work of saving that the church does. 
The new emphasis must be on the other 
form of saving, namely, conservation. 
If two fifths of the Sunday school which 
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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

is conservation supplies four fifths of 
the church's gain, one sees at once how 
much more profitable conservation is than 
reclamation. Reclamation only supplies 
about one fifth of our church increase. 
That could not balance the death rate, 
lapses, etc., of the church. The serious 
thing that the church has not fully sensed 
is that while it has conserved two fifths 
of its fertile land it has allowed three 
fifths of it to become desert; that is, it 
is letting its own land "run out" much 
faster than it is reclaiming other land, 
and so the desert is encroaching upon 
the fertile land. Churches in the big 
cities are dying out, and yet the child- 
hood of the cities is not dying out. The 
children are either not reached for the Sun- 
day school, or they are not held in it, 
saved and built into the church. The 
need is not less reclamation, but more, 
vastly more, conservation. Something 
must be done to conserve the three fifths 
of our Sunday school which are wasted. 
The more conservation that is done, the 
less reclamation will need to be done. 
There will abide these two methods, 
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AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

reclamation and conservation, but the 
greater of these is conservation. A thou- 
sand children saved to the Kingdom are 
worth far more to the church and the 
world than a thousand middle-aged and 
old-aged people rescued for the Kingdom. 
An eminent judge in Brooklyn said to a 
courtroom full of people, in the hearing 
of the writer, this significant thing, that 
he had been sitting on the bench for 
five years, and that during those five 
years twenty-seven hundred young crim- 
inals had been before him for sentence. 
Of that twenty-seven hundred, not two 
per cent had ever been in a Sunday 
school of any church — Catholic, Protes- 
tant, or Jewish — and that not one of 
them was attending any Sunday school 
during the period in which the offense 
was committed. That is a commentary 
on the Sunday school which deserves 
careful attention. The Sunday school 
does not make criminals. It gives young 
people better incentives to the worth 
while in life than any other institution 
we have. It teaches that goodness is not 
only the foundation of happiness, but of 
135 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

all real success as well. Think of the 
heart-aches to fathers and mothers, think 
of the cost to the state, think of the 
menace to society that would be averted 
if those twenty-seven hundred young crim- 
inals had gone to Sunday school rather 
than to the street corners and the saloons, 
the common schools of crime in these 
days. Is there a lesson of encourage- 
ment to Sunday school workers in that 
judge's experience? Does Sunday school 
evangelism pay? Nothing pays so well. 

The law of harvest in nature is like in 
kind and proportionate in quantity (see 
Gal. 6. 7, 8; 2 Cor. 9. 6). The law of 
businesses the same. Other things being 
equal, the more that is wisely invested, 
the larger the returns, the larger the 
net profits. That same law holds good 
in Sunday school evangelism — the larger 
the investment, the larger the net profits. 
If the net profits are not as large as they 
ought to be from the Sunday school, it 
might be well to ask a few questions. 
Pastors, how much have you invested in 
the Sunday school? Has not your in- 
vestment there made a larger return 
136 



AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY 

than any other investment of like amount 
anywhere else in the church? Did you 
invest in the Sunday school all you could? 
If not, will you do it now? Superin- 
tendents, how much have you invested in 
the Sunday school? Have you been dis- 
appointed at the small returns to the 
church from your schools? Could you 
expect any larger return on the invest- 
ment you made? Teachers, what in- 
vestment have you made to win your 
classes to Christ? Does your work seem 
somewhat of a failure? But have not 
the returns far exceeded your invest- 
ments? Parents, what have you invested 
of home training in cooperation with the 
Sunday school to win your own children 
to Jesus Christ? Have your children 
failed to realize your expectation of them? 
What part of your investment failed? 
Frankly, is it not true that the net profits 
are more than could be really expected 
from the investment made? 

What might the net profits be if the 

nearly half a million of trained Sunday 

school workers, and if the millions of 

parents, seriously and persistently in- 

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THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

vested hand and purse and heart and 
brain to keep and train for God the young 
life committed to their care? No work is 
more profitable, more blessed, more hope- 
ful, than winning the fresh, unspoiled 
young life of the Sunday school to Christ. 
The day of march has come, for the church 
in this great work of Sunday school evan- 
gelism. What is done in the next five 
years in the Sunday school will determine 
what the church will be in the next fifty 
years. If the church is to maintain its 
place of moral leadership in the world, 
its first business is to save its own young 
people who are now in the Sunday school. 
The largest net profits from its efforts 
in personal work and the investment 
of its money will come from the Sunday 
school. The Sunday school is the church's 
greatest evangelistic opportunity, both for 
to-day and to-morrow. 

The net profits are the conservation 
of life, large churches, happy homes, 
good citizenship, public virtue, civic and 
social righteousness, true patriotism, vital 
religion, industrial peace, national pros- 
perity, and world brotherhood. 
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